


fool me twice

by jilyandbambi



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artistic License - The Music Industry, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emphasis on angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-08-05 02:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16359104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilyandbambi/pseuds/jilyandbambi
Summary: Jack's taken up cooking in the months since he's gotten out of rehab.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So...selfishly, I don't like tagging warnings when I write fic because I don't like giving away plot points, which is why I specifically chose to check off "Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings." So please be mindful.
> 
> Aside from that, a few other housekeeping notes: 
> 
> 1) this work is unbeta'd (sorry) 
> 
> 2) I'm playing fast and loose with the timeline here. Let's say there were about 2-3 months between Jack coming home from rehab and Ally canceling her European tour to be with him for the summer
> 
> 3) I might be wrong, but I don't remember them actually saying where Jack and Ally live in the movie, so I'm gonna take a stab and say the outskirts of Westchester County, NY, given how often Ramon and Lorenzo and his friends show up at Ally and Jack's house. 
> 
> 4) For those of you who don't know, Product Development--from what I can gather from HowStuffWorks--used to be called "Artist Development," though many labels have since dropped this moniker in favor of "Product" (which speaks so much truth to the nature of the music industry and how it treats artists its almost self parody, IMO). But basically, this section of a record label is responsible for planning and overseeing the careers of the artists the label signs. Its job is to promote and publicize the artist over the entire course of their career. While the A&R (or Artist and Repertoire) department is the department that "signs" the artist to the label officially, and oversees everything in terms the production of the artists' albums (which songs go where, which ones are singles, who produces the album, where it's produced, etc.)

 

 

Jack’s taken up cooking again in the months since he’s been out of rehab. Probably wasn’t the best idea since one of the things Carl from group said to do to help them stay off the juice was to pick up a hobby that didn’t remind them of the things that make them want to get fucked up in the first place. Cooking reminds Jack of his dad, and of Bobby. And of how, back in the day, when Jack been the only one in their house both home and sober, breakfast and dinner (nobody ever seemed to have time for lunch) had fallen on him. He hadn’t minded it back then, had liked it even because it let him make a game out of being poor as shit. He’d liked to imagine he was a mad scientist, or an evil sorcerer, rummaging through the fridge and the cupboards on the hunt to find the secret ingredient that could sweeten up sugarless cream of wheat, or stretch the last slice of bologna into enough sandwiches for two and a half grown men. It wasn’t a chore, it was experimentation, expression, another form of art, one that Jack had gotten damn good at by the time he and Bobby were on the road. But all too soon after that it became three a.m. diners and highway takeout, and he’d fallen off the habit for a good twenty years or so while he fell into a whole other one.

But now Jack has an actual kitchen to work with, with perishables—from Whole Foods, for God’s sake, where Jack thinks they must screen the produce before they put it out, swear to God he’s never in his life seen apples so fucking shiny--and a sink that runs water he doesn’t have to check for rust, and a stove with burners he doesn’t have to light himself. Cooking wasn’t just fun for him anymore, It was relaxing, It was soothing.

It was routine now for him to get up first thing in the morning to make Ally and him breakfast and her lunch for her to take with her to the studio or to practice or wherever her schedule has her going, then for him to start dinner once she texted him that she was on her way home so they can finish it up together. In that way, Jack supposed it was fuckin’ stupid that cooking still reminded him of Dad and Bobby when the days of microwave macaroni topped with watered-down ketchup, of hard won meals no one but him actually showed up to eat, were long behind him now that he was making fuckin’ petting zoo themed bento boxes and whatever the hell else Ally pulled off of Pinterest to have him try.

She told him damn near every day that she loved having a man who can cook and every time she does he’ll prop her up on the counter beside his cutting board and say into her lips that he _loves being her man who can cook_.

That’s another thing he’d taken up recently: telling Ally how much he loves her. Not like he did before, because now he knows just _I love you_ isn’t enough, she liked it when he got specific. And so Jack made it his business now to make sure she knew exactly what he loved about her, about them, about them being them: the mornings when they walk Charlie together, her coming to the pool with him on Thursdays and FaceTiming Ramon while he does his laps, falling asleep next to her every night, those times when they make love on the kitchen floor right in the middle of breakfast, the surprised giggle-snort she does when he burrows his face in the space just below her belly button, when she sneaks up behind him while he’s in the kitchen, wraps herself around him from behind and buries her face in his back.

Little stuff like that that also remind him of the stupid things he used to say out loud to Bobby and Dad and his teachers when he was a kid, and they’d all look at him like he had three heads, or worse, like he wasn’t even there. The stupid things he’d long since thought were too dumb to actually speak to, let alone tell to anyone, Ally especially. The stupid things that don’t feel so stupid, that don’t make him feel stupid for bringing up anymore because of the way Ally looks at him whenever he does, like he’d just performed some kind of miracle; plucked a star from the sky and put it in her hand, or some shit. Like he was someone worth believing in.

Which was probably why Carl’s warning about steering clear of stuff that made you wish you were dead or drunk didn’t apply to him as much; because the memories of all the shit from way back when made him hurt less when whatever he and Ally were doing happened to bring them up. She was good like that; good for the soul, his most of all, as the only goddamned person in the world who cared if it was mended.

She hated it when he talked like that. So did his therapist, and he really was trying to quit but like he kept telling both of them, one thing at a time.

He was trying though, and one of the things that helped was at night, when it got the worst, and if Ally was still awake he’d tell her about a really, truly, dumb as shit idea he had on him. Like the two of them going to Paris after her album’s done, since she’d never been and that had been the place she was looking forward to seeing the most on the European leg of her tour. The one she’d cancelled because of him. Paris is an overcrowded, piss-soaked shit hole during the high season, but it’s actually really nice around the very end of August into September and they could make it a whole thing and go down south to the Riviera and to Monaco, and he’d take her shopping. They could even rent a yacht for a couple days, _you know, if you wanted to make it a thing_.

She did. _But only if you promise you’ll try snails with me._

He will (he doesn’t ruin it for her by revealing that he gets them every time he goes to France).

Mostly, it just felt good to be making real plans for something so far away.

That, actually, is one stupid thing he didn’t actually mean to tell Ally, it had just slipped out, in the moment. No regrets though; not just because it had felt damn good to say, but mainly ‘cause the admission gave her a second wind and just that fast she was on and riding him til he came so hard they both blacked out and wound up skipping breakfast for the first time in neither of them can remember how long.

Two weeks since that night was how long it took for Jack to get that stupid again.

He’d been on a buzz—not a bender-buzz, a _buzz_. The hard to explain kind like the one he’d had the first time he and Ally’d sung together, or when she’d agreed to go on tour with him, or when they got Charlie, or when she’d said yes to marrying him. That kind of buzz, except not because every single time he’d felt it before he’d sworn it was a once and a lifetime kinda thing but now he feels it almost every day when he wakes up.

Anyway, he’d been on a buzz and all of the sudden he was seeing Christmas lights strung around the outside of the house, and those fucking cheesy holiday kitchen ornaments—Mr. And Mrs. Claus salt and pepper shakers and a fancy, red and gold Christmas place setting at the dining room table and boughs of holly strung around the island kitchen counter—and a tree, and before he knew what he was saying or whether Ally was even awake to hear it Jack was blurting out that he wanted to have Christmas that year. 

“Well good ‘cause Christmas is gonna happen whether you want it to or not, honey,” she’d laughed into his chest.

No, he’d explained; Christmas-Christmas, the kind his dad and Bobby had been too drunk and too busy, respectively, to ever give him when he was a kid. The kind he’d always skipped all those years he’d spent working and touring. The kind they’d skipped last year, when they could have been celebrating their first Christmas being married. Or the year before, when they were still touring and still too new for it to mean anything real. He’d told her then, about the year he was nine and his grandmother, who he’d learned later on had been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that year, invited him—and only him, no Dad, no Bobby—to join her and the rest of his mother’s family at Christmas dinner. He’d told her about how excited he’d been, having watched every year before then from the trailer on his mother’s family’s land, as all the relatives poured in—the aunts and uncles who hated his father and brother, the cousins who picked on him at school—watched as they all filed into the big house that was always decorated like something out of a snow globe around that time. He’d told her about how the entire dining room had gone dead silent the moment his grandmother had brought him in, about how his uncles had scowled and his cousins had whispered _Why’s_ ** _he_** _here?_ and one of his aunts had said, _Mom, maybe the holiday wasn’t the best time for all this_ , and then at the head of the table, his grandfather had shot up, scoured Jack with a glare so hate-filled he’d felt his veins turn to ice, and had stormed up the stairs, slamming the door to the bedroom hard enough to send shockwaves through the whole house. And then how his grandma led him out of the dining room, put his Christmas present—which turned out to be a fucking awesome remote control airplane—in his arms, and with a stilted hug and kiss to the forehead, waved him to the door.

Ally listened to all of that without saying anything. Then she told him about the year—she thinks she might have been nine, too, or maybe ten—that her mom traded all of the Christmas presents, the ones Lorenzo had worked overtime for weeks and weeks to buy, for scratch-offs and booze, then took off the night of Christmas Eve while Ally and her dad were at mass and didn’t come back until the day after the Epiphany. She told him about her and her dad coming home to find the tree tipped over out of the stand and a mess of shredded wrapping paper at the base, and how she’d turned up to look at her father, who’d had tears coming down his face, and had said, _“Don’t worry about it, Dad. I don’t even believe in Santa Claus anymore,”_ and how he’d gone still as a statue, squeezed her shoulder once, and fled upstairs to the bathroom. She told Jack about following her father up the stairs and pressing her ear to the locked door and listening to her father’s bawling through the sound of the empty shower running, and how she’d cried herself to sleep that night because she knew there was nothing she could do to fix her dad’s Christmas.

And because—sober or not—Jack was first and foremost a grade-A asshole, he’d laughed, because swear to Christ the two of them are like something out of an old timey Dickens novel or something, Great fuckin’ Expectations. Ally must think so too, because she joined him in laughing; and it was settled. They’re having a real Christmas this year to make up for a lifetime of shit ones. It’ll be the two of them, and Charlie, and Ally’s dad and his friends, Ramon, Noodles and his wife and kids, and all the chicks from the bar. Fucking Rez could even come too, if she wanted.

“And Bobby?”

It didn’t throw him that she mentioned him, it threw him that Jack didn’t even think about Bobby. He was always thinking about Bobby, but not Bobby and Christmas. He wasn’t even sure if his brother liked Christmas, truth be told. Plus, there was the whole amends thing Carl talked about in group. About how even if you’re not following all the twelve steps, you’ve gotta respect the people you hurt while you were fucked up and what they need from you now that you’re trying to be better. Bobby had said that it was easier without him and with all Jack had put him through all these years, he figured he at least owed the guy his space when it was all Bobby had really ever asked of him. They talked every once in a blue moon since Jack’s been out of rehab—over the phone, because Bobby was a fucking old man who hated texting—but they hadn’t met face to face since Bobby’d brought him home. Jack assumed, because that’s what he wanted.

But wouldn’t it be breaking some kind of etiquette thing to have Christmas at his house and not invite his only brother?

Fuck. This is what he got for tryin’ to be civilized.

Ally, on her end, had gotten real good at reading him, and when he didn’t answer her right away, she’d said,

_“You could always start off slow.”_

And that was how Jack had wound up making an entire fucking tray of Southwest-style hot wings tonight off a recipe Ally had found on fucking Buzzfeed of all things.

The plan was for Bobby to swing by at around eight, once he finished helping set up for a gig Willie was doing out in Queens. Jack figured as long as the wings and corn on the cob held out they could put on some NASCAR highlights and hopefully be done by eleven at the latest.

“What’s got you all grinny?”

The arms around his waist tightened into a short squeeze as Ally’s fingers tickled at the base of his abdomen. Jack laughed quietly and spun around, pulling her to him and giving her a quick peck on the lips. 

“Just thinkin’ about what Bobby’s gonna say when I tell him I’m in bed by eleven most days now.”

Ally laughed with him and pressed herself further against him, laying her head against his chest, her arms tightening around his middle again. “Why not make it a late night? The whole point of me having Rez schedule this stupid meeting for tonight was so you and Bobby could have boy-time.”

Jack pulled an exaggerated face. Ally laughed harder at his antics.

“Sorry, ‘boys night,’” she nudged him playfully. “Is that better?”

“If you gotta call it something,” Jack grumbled in fake exasperation. He kissed the top of her head and tucked it under his chin as he leaned ever so slightly back against the countertop, taking her with him at the angle.

The two of them stayed like that for a few more moments; her with her cheek pressed against his shirt and him with his face buried in her hair, breathing in that tangy-sweet apricot and marigold conditioner she’d started using as he ran his hands along the exposed back of her cocktail dress. Truthfully, Jack wasn’t wild about the fact that Ally was going to be skipping dinner with him and Bobby. Not just because it meant losing a much-needed buffer, but also for her sake; the nature of the meeting she and Rez were off to that night.

He hadn’t been happy when she’d told him about the tour; hadn’t liked that she’d cancelled it, hadn’t liked that she’d lied to his face about cancelling it, and most of all, Jack absolutely fuckin’ _hated_ that she’d done it all for the sake of him, her washed up, fuckup, dead weight husband. He’d let her know all of this in fine detail when the truth had come out. But that had been all he could do by that point. Everything was over and done with before Jack could even say his peace, and at the end of it all Ally was a grown woman who knew her own mind, and Jack respected that. Privately, though—privately, because he didn’t want her to think he didn’t have her back—he was nervous for her. There was more than money on the line with a tour that big, there was a brand at stake—the artist’s and the label’s. Calling the whole thing off the way Ally did, out of the blue and on a whim; she didn’t just cost her label millions in ticket sales and merchandising, she embarrassed them. Grammy-winning artist or no, Ally’s name was still too new for her to get away with pulling a stunt like that.

Having the reputation Jack had had in the years back before his career went to shit, he knew the kind of ass-kissing it took to get back in the label’s good graces after you fucked up—though mostly it was Bobby who’d interceded on his behalf. That was to say, Jack would be feeling better about this meeting Ally was having tonight with Rez if he was going with her. But aside from the fact that Ally could handle her own damn self, and that the name Jackson Maine was less than dog shit nowadays as far as the industry was concerned, having the whole fucking reason for the predicament present in the room during the groveling session would only hurt Rez and Ally’s shot at fixing things.

“You look beautiful,” he said, pulling back to get a good look at her. She’d chosen a midnight blue, v-neck cocktail dress that stopped just above her knees and hugged all of the curves Jack loved in just the right places. Drinking her in as he was wet his appetite, and his dick throbbed against the fly of his jeans as he stamped down the vision of bunching up the skirt of her dress and taking her there and then against the flour dusted countertop, her legs clasped around his waist, the heels of her Monolos digging into his ass as she urged him in deeper, gasping his name as he nipped a string of love bites across the exposed skin of her throat and cleavage.

He settled for a simple kiss instead, long and deep, with just a bit of tongue as his hands roamed from her back down the curve of her ass and back again.

They broke apart at the sound of a knock at the door; and beckoned by Ally’s winded, “Come in!” came Rez, dressed to the douched up nines in all black. Definitely a no-socks night, Jack would wager, were he a betting man.

“You look fantastic!” Rez said by way of greeting, pecking Ally on both cheeks. To Jack he gave a casual wave which Jack returned with a stiff nod as Rez moved further into the kitchen and drew Ally away from Jack so he could size her up.

Jack went back to the chicken for this next part. Watching these interactions of theirs whenever they met up was fucking unbearable; with Rez silently picking Ally apart from head to toe, appraising her the way a cattle rancher might his prized calf before entering it in the state fair. It made Jack want to pull the guy’s head off, or better yet, take Ally in his arms and shake her til she got it through her head that it didn’t matter what assholes like him and Rez thought she looked like, she was fuckin’ better than any of them and she had the talent to back it up. He would never understand why the woman who’d punched out a cop for him without even thinking twice let a gimpy fuck like Rez Gavron get away with picking the meat from her bones til there was nothing left. But Ally did, every single time, and Jack would be damned if felt he could speak to it without it leading to another fight. So he bit his tongue and stayed out of it, he’d caused her enough grief to last them a lifetime.

“Only lose the earrings,” Rez settled on finally, an expert by now in how to screw up his face just enough to get Ally to falter. “They’re a little too Coachella for what we’re going for tonight.”

Heat coiled in Jack’s belly and he stepped away from the stove to glare at Rez above Ally’s head. She loved those earrings; white gold hoops crafted in the style of a dreamcatcher, with dark red and blue bits of painted clay embedded all around the center, and white gold feathers and stringy things dangling off the bottom, hanging just past her chin. She had picked them out at a pop up shop they’d gone to in Harlem a couple weeks ago on a double date with Ramon and his now ex, Peter.

Jack would be lying if he said he knew much at all about dressing for the occasion, but he knew enough to know the jewelry she’d picked out wasn’t something you’d wear to a business meeting. But so the fuck what? Wearing hippy-dippy stuff like that made Ally feel beautiful (not to mention, look sexy as hell, in Jack’s opinion); and anyway, as far as Jack knew, socks were definitely required attire when one was going semi-formal, so that limey fuckstick had a lot of fucking nerve giving Ally any kind of grief for wearing what made her feel good.

“You look beautiful,” Jack told her again, and in open defiance of the _‘Course he does_ eye roll Rez wasn’t at all discreet about shooting Ally’s way, came up behind them and wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek; frowning when her reluctance didn’t let up despite his assurance. She stood coiled under Rez’ scrutiny, her head craning away from Jack’s lips toward their bedroom, where Jack could sense her mentally rifling through her jewelry box. He spun her to face him before she could act and bowed his head down to her, bopping their foreheads together, then leaned up some and with his index finger traced the air along her nose, never once letting go of her eyes until she returned his grin. She bent her head up and their lips met, the kiss long and steadily deepening, Jack, for his part, refusing to let up til he could be sure whatever ugliness Ally was convinced was still inside her had completely tapered away, at least for the moment.

“Alright, _enough_ , you two turtledoves,” Rez said, full of “playful” disdain from his place at the entryway. Christ Almighty but if it was one thing Jack hated more than a pompous asswipe, it was a pompous asswipe who fancied themselves a fucking comedian.

Nodding Ally’s way, Rez jerked an impatient thumb in the direction of the driveway and headed off. Ally made to break away, but Jack held her to him for just a second longer.

“I’m gonna make it a late night,” he told her, low enough so that only she could hear. “I wanna be up so you can tell me how it went when you come home.”

He smiled, satisfied, when he saw the remaining tension fully leave her. She threw her arms around his neck and propelled herself up to give him one last, lingering kiss.

“I love you,” she said against his lips. “Don’t be nervous. It’s going to go fine tonight with Bobby. He misses you more than you do him.”

Jack doubted that, but the promise of it felt good, he didn’t want to jinx it away.

“I love you, too.”

They released each other enough for Jack to loop an arm around her elbow, and the two of them followed Rez out to the driveway where his silver douche-mobile sat running. Jack opened the passengers’ side door and helped Ally lower herself into the seat, and with a final wave goodbye watched them pull away into the night.

Bobby’s truck pulled up not ten minutes after.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dinner flat out sucked, and it was only _mostly_ due to Ally “not having enough room” to finish her chicken piccata; you know, like a lady.

Even now, months after having won three Grammys and headlining a sold out solo tour all over North America, there were still a million and one straight up baffling nuances to living the life of an international pop star Ally didn’t think she would ever get used to. And currently right at the very top of that list were the fuck you-hours-long work dinners where the implicit rule seemed to be that the artist order the least fattening item on the menu and eat less than half of it while her manager and the suits from the label took their sweet ass time grinding down on dry-aged New York Strip, fire-grilled Chilean sea bass, surf and turf, and fucking tiramisu for dessert. Mind you, the restaurant closed at ten on weeknights and it had been exactly 11:04 when Gordy Russell, the label’s head of Marketing and New Media and the worst person Ally, a fifteen-year veteran of the food service industry, had ever met, decided to order coffee and dessert for the whole table. Minus Ally, of course; because he knew she was “trying to keep up your figure, sweetheart.” Their poor waiter, a young chollo-looking guy named Marcus, looked ready to commit ritual murder when Gordy asked him what his favorite dessert item was. Ally physically hurt for him. When they finally got up to leave she’d made it a point to leave a stack of bills tucked under her plate while Rez and the others weren’t looking. She didn’t need to know Gordy the way she did to know it was always the “close down the restaurant” types who had the worst tipping etiquette. Plus, it’d made her feel better to do something nice for someone else once it was decided that the three-and-a-half hour shitfest that had already eaten up too much of Ally’s life wouldn’t end with a half-eaten dinner. Fucking typical.

Ally knew she should have seen this one coming. The only saving grace up til that point had been that Rez had done most of the talking all through dinner. But now he’d whet their appetite, with how much he’d gushed about how she’d been working nonstop on her followup since she’d announced the cancellation of the tour, how much she really, truly wanted to make it up to bother her fans and her label. Which was true, both parts. Ally—with a lot of help from Jack, especially as of late— _had_ been working her ass off writing new songs and melodies for her To-Be-Titled sophomore album, and even though there was still a ways to go before any of them were ready for the studio, most of what she had she really liked, just not enough to play to anyone (who wasn’t Jack), let alone these guys. The mere thought of doing so made her skin crawl, and made her wish—not for the first time—that Jack could have come to this thing with her.

Look, if it made her some kind of pre-feminist, apron-wearing, 50s housewife to need her husband holding her hand through her work, so be it. Ally would cop to it without batting an eye. Facts were facts and these were that, years later, the scars left by her earlier attempts to break into the industry were still plenty raised and scabby, despite how far she’d come. Some days Ally was sure Jack was the only thing that could ever make them disappear. 

Not that she wasn’t completely and utter-motherfucking-ly grateful to Rez for continuing to have her back even after she’d pulled the rug out from under him. Ever since Ally had demanded he tell the label to cancel the tour he’d been doing everything he could to cover her ass and pump her up to his bosses—the bosses she was signed to, the bosses she’d brought home three Grammys off a debut album, the bosses she’d humiliated when she’d called off the break she’d been lucky enough to have been handed in the first place.

But Christ, she was in deep here; completely fucking out of her depth.

It was in moments like these Ally still inside felt seventeen, banging on the doors of every major, fledgling, and indie label in the city. Eighteen and up two hours early for a meeting with that producer who’d reached out to _her_ on MySpace only to be told by his PA three hours after the meeting was supposed to start that he’d decided to sign another artist and the label wasn’t looking to take on any additional acts at this time. Twenty and getting her foot in the door for the first, second, eighth time and watching the faces of every guy in every room at every label twist up in disgust, in disappointment, in i _f only you weren’t so dark. so ethnic looking. so big-boned. so short. so big in the chest, would you consider getting a nose job?—nah, that wouldn’t work, the problem is your head. It’s too small for your chest, makes you look lopsided. Especially with how uneven your eyes are. Nothing we can do for that unless you’re cool with getting your breasts done_. Then twenty-three and in the private showroom at _Bally’s_ with the producer who’d found her busking on the platform of the Canal Street subway and had offered to hear her demo if she’d agree to dinner. Then back on her back with his hand, clammy and creeping between her thighs, and him, a man formerly of average height—suddenly enormous, blocking what little light remained in the red-lit room—hovering above her, his whisper threatening promises in her ear as his his fingers began to probe ( _That’s it, sweet girl. Don’t fight me. Time to pay the piper, you want that golden ticket, don’t you?)._ Twenty-three and a week later, brought to her knees in the middle of her childhood bedroom by the _finality_ in the humiliation that had struck her heart like a bolt of lightning when Mr. Twelve Years in the Business and I’ve Never Heard A Sound Like Yours sent her back a MySpace IM with a message from the label: _Sorry, sweetie, me and the guys at the studio listened to your demo, and we all agree. You’ve got the pipes, for sure, but you don’t have the face to do anything with them._

Ally knew, _she_ _knew_ , what bullshit it was that she still felt like this: adrift and drowning in a riptide she’d had no business wading into. For God’s sake, after five hit singles, a slew of Grammys and AMAs and Choice Awards, touring sold out venues almost nonstop since she’d met Jack, all the crap she’d gone through, all the shit that was said and done to her back when she was still a kid should be far behind her, Ally knew that. Told herself that every time those old thoughts and old memories crept back into her head: She’d won, literally. All those assholes from a lifetime ago had all been proven wrong by Jack, by Rez, by her.

Except she’d gotten cocky and screwed it all up.

Except not really because if she had, if she really, truly had fucked it up beyond repair the label would’ve dropped her right when she’d flipped them off and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing Rez could have done to fix it. 

Except everything wasn’t fixed yet. That was why they were where they were now, walking up the path to the home of Paul Heywood—the head of A&R and Product Devo. Otherwise known as the man who’d decided she had to axe “Is That Alright?” from _Ally’s_ final track listing, and who’d decided she was big enough to tour Europe, and who Ally had flipped off the hardest—so he could decide for the other execs whether she still had a voice they liked on her, and a face that could be forgiven, and a nose that could be fixed, and fat she could have trimmed and a chest she’d have resized, and hair that maybe _would_ look better blonde, black, blue, anything.

Anything, so long as Paul didn’t end the night telling her he liked what she had but wanted it from a girl ten years younger, with a thinner waist and thinner lips and fairer skin with a flatter stomach and natural blonde hair; some girl-woman with the apple-pie, doe-eyed, America’s sweetheart face that wouldn’t spit at his feet when he tried to send her to Europe.

God, Ally wished Jack were there.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Paul was already home by the time she and Rez arrived. He told them as he led them from the foyer through to the back of the house where his music room was that Gordy, thank God, had decided to call it a night after they’d parted ways at the restaurant and had gone home to the poor woman he was married to and their even unluckier newborn baby. It would just be the three of them for drinks. Good, it was late and Ally was tired, and didn’t think she had the energy to hold her tongue around Gordy’s antics any longer. Plus this meant less people for her to make an ass of herself in front of; always a glass half full.

The “music room” Paul led them to was more like a trophy room, in Ally’s opinion; or more aptly put, a shrine. Three of the four walls of the windowless back room were lined with framed covers of Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, featuring the faces of artists and bands whose careers Paul had no doubt planned and overseen the promotion of the way he had hers.’ The fourth, perpendicular to the doorway, featured a built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookcase overstuffed with Grammys, Tonys, RIAA placards going back at least twenty-five years, certifying Paul platinum, double platinum, diamond. The whole middle shelf was dedicated to a single Oscar, though for what movie, Ally couldn’t say.

But the most valuable treasure in the whole room, for her, was a criminally neglected champagne concert piano which sat alone along the far wall opposite the trophies. There was no way to tell for sure, but if Ally were to base how long it’d been since that beautiful creature had been tuned or touched byloving hands on the height of the stack of magazines and stray papers piled on top of the closed fallboard, measured in inches, Ally would play it safe and say it had been about twenty years, give or take. A number that made her chest hurt. The poor thing refused to allow her eyes to break away from it, even as Paul steered her and Rez in the direction of the trophy wall, where before it sat three beige love seats arranged in an incomplete square around a glass coffee table already laid out with three full glasses of Cheval Blanc and a frickin charcuterie board that was probably only there for aesthetic purposes. God, Ally was so hungry.

“Please, make yourselves at home,” Paul, who had probably already begun to partake before they’d arrived, said in a bubbly voice. “Take your shoes off, get comfy.”

Ally and Rez both gave awkward smiles as she followed Paul over to the two-cushion couch to the left of the one facing the piano and Rez took the spot directly adjacent to her on her left. Paul, to Ally’s surprise, plopped down on the cushion next to her and promptly handed her a glass.

“You must’ve heard the rumor that I play my best when I’m tipsy,” she tried to joke as she accepted the offered drink.

“Must get that from your husband, then,” Paul said, with deliberate breeze. Ally could practically hear Rez holding his breath.

“Not exactly,” said Ally, floundering for a way to rescue the small talk so that Rez didn’t kill her when this was over. “I’m Italian, we hold our wine better.”

Paul chuckled. “Touché. One of my ex-mother-in-law’s was Sicilian, and let me tell you, the woman was five-foot-one, _maybe_ , but you’d get her three sons and four son-in-laws in a room together and she’d drink every last one of us under the table.”

Ally almost spit out her wine; Wow, the memories. “Are you sure you’re not talking about my Nanna? Because you just described every Christmas dinner up until I was like, twelve.”

Paul threw his head back and laughed again. “As many times as I’ve been married, coulda been. Swear that family had about fifty grandkids running around at any given point.”

Ally took another long sip of wine and was going to respond when Rez’ phone went off.

“Ugh, it’s that writer from _Maxim_. Again,” he said apologetically, looking up from the display at the two of them. He rolled his eyes playfully at Ally and she bit back a laugh. They’d been trying to nail down a time to set up a shoot for the September issue’s cover for three weeks now, but someone always ended up having to cancel.

“They givin’ you the runaround?” Paul asked sympathetically.

“Like you wouldn’t believe, mate.” Rez stood up and gestured to the door. “You two going to be alright while I take this?”

“Don’t trouble yourself, son,” Paul waved him off. “I remember those days all too well. Go take care of business. Ally and I can bond over our hard-drinking Italian matriarchs while we wait for you to come back.”

Rez nodded gratefully and, phone still ringing impatiently, made for the hall in a sort of half-jog, shutting the door behind him.

“Ridiculous,” Paul said, with a banal, long-suffering smirk. “Thirty years in the game and you still have the same purportedly professional people pulling the same shit.”

Ally went to laugh, but as soon as she did it was as if the arm holding her now half-empty glass of wine went dead. She spasmed, and before she could catch herself the glass tipped out of her hand and onto the floor, painting the beige couch and off-white shag rug beneath them in a fresh candy apple rouge.

“ _Oh my God!_ ”

Mortified, Ally sank to her knees to pick up the glass, which thankfully wasn’t broken. Her eyes darted around the room to find a napkin or towel as, in her panic, the floor beneath her began to dip and spin. A hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her to her feet.

“Fuck, Paul I’m so sorry!” Ally babbled, her vision starting to blur with her frustration, her words oozing out of her, thick and goopy like day-old gravy. “I’m s…sssorry. Sorry. S-s-sssorry. I-I-I don’t know…what…”

“Shhh.” Paul pulled her to him. For support, Ally thought at first, her brain working slower than her mouth but sputtering ahead when his hand slid all the way down her back to squeeze her ass, hitching her up against his chest.

“What..?”

A hand, hard and big enough to cover Ally’s whole face, cupped her cheek and began stroking it, while her eyes—the only part of her body that hadn’t yet gone numb—darted from the closed door, to the walls of the windowless room. The walls, she was only just realizing, which were painted dark red. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck…

“R-R-Rerr’zz…”

“Shhh,” Paul said again, cradling the back of Ally’s head as the floor fell out from under her and she seemed to get taller, and taller, until she realized it was because her feet weren’t touching the ground anymore, they were around Paul’s waist; and the next the she knew she was counting the steps of a white marble staircase from over his shoulder. _Two, five, eleven, three._

Her mouth had stopped working, but she could feel Paul’s hands kneading the skin of her thighs, inching up the hem of her dress.

_Seven, eight, fourteen, six…_

Ally’s tongue was glued to the bottom of her mouth, fat and swollen like a dead slug. A sob choked its up her throat and grunted its way past her lips, a low, wet keen.

“Shhhh…” There was a tearing sound, and Ally couldn’t work her lips to cry for Jack, for Rez, for help; but she could feel Paul—

”Shhhh…” A threat, promised against her mouth. “That’s it, relax. Good girl…”

_That’s it, sweet girl_

_Don’t fight me_

_Time to pay the piper_

“…It’s just us now.”

 

Please.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooo, good news gang, this fic is pretty much already finished! 
> 
> I was originally going to post this whole story as one longform oneshot but, eh, I like the chapter breakdown better bc then I get to read all your reactions before you know how it all ends. This fic and the previous one were a little difficult for me in that it's the first time in a while I've written anything without a beta working with me, so i only have myself to judge whether or not something works. Which is another reason I wanted to post this thing piecemeal rather than all at once. 
> 
> Basically, PLEASE don't be shy about telling me what you think so far!! I can't wait to see what you all make of this!!!!
> 
> Come cry about Jack and Ally with me on Tumblr @flaminganakin


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

“You’ve got ‘em in.”

Jack started. In front of him, the TV blared on, the NASCAR highlights long since over. He hadn’t noticed. How fucking long had Bobby been forcing him to sit through the fuckin’ U.S. Open? God, he was such a fuckin’ old man. 

“What?”

Bobby tapped the shell of his ear. “You got ‘em in.”

It still took Jack a few seconds longer than it should’ve. From the corner of his eye, he could see Bobby watching him, something indistinguishable in his eyes. Embarrassed, he ducked his head away.

“Ah, yeah,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, y’know, ‘m not tourin’ anymore and it just makes it easier, right? Livin’ with someone if you can hear ‘em.”

Bobby said nothing for a moment.

“Not playin’ music at all?”

Jack’s head snapped up. When the fuck did he say that?

“No, no, I am,” he said. “Just here, you know. Helpin’ Ally with her new stuff. Playin some of my own, every now and then.”

“New stuff?”

Jack couldn’t tell if that was interest or concern. Probably both.

“Yeah…” Again, he ducked away and rubbed at the back of his neck. “But just, like, for me—for her, mostly. Everything I write I hear with her voice—But me, I’m not, I…Don’t have anything in the works, really.”

“Mm.”

And just like that, the conversation dried up again and Bobby went back to the game. If you could call it a game. Fuckin’ golf. Shouldn’t even be called a sport when as a player, you can’t do anything to affect the other guy’s score like in hockey or basketball or even fuckin’ soccer. Golf’s a contest, a game, like bowling and Chinese checkers, not a fuckin’ sport. Fuck, couldn’t they at least compromise on tennis? At least one of the ESPNs had to be showin’ a tennis game; Wimbledon was still goin’ on, right?

It was almost eleven-thirty and Ally still wasn’t back. Not that Jack had expected her to be, those things tended to take all fucking night, from what he could remember. But what he hadn’t expected was for Bobby to still be hangin’ around so late. They’d finished eating something like two hours ago, neither of them particularly hungry. The conversation, as Jack had predicted, had been stilted and awkward, the two of them still dancing around each other, not quite sure what there was to say now that they weren’t all wrapped up in each other’s orbit anymore. But Ally hadn’t exactly been wrong. Bobby did seem somewhat glad to see him. He was still here, after all.

“You don’t have to, you know.”

Jack didn’t know why the fuck he’d just did that. Bobby didn’t look away from the TV, for a few fleeting seconds Jack thought it was because God was looking out for him for once and had taken his brother’s hearing too, if only so he could stuff those last few words back in his cake hole and shut it.

“Do what?”

Fuck.

“Stay,” he said. “Don’t need a fuckin’ babysitter. I’ll be alright til Ally gets back.”

Bobby scoffed. “You’re dead on your feet, boy.”

“So?”

“What’re you waitin’ up for, then?” Bobby’s head finally snapped away from the game and he pinned Jack with that old _Boy, I fuckin’ dressed you for more than thirty goddamned years_ look Jack both despised and could never look away from.

“Her,” he said. “I wanna be up so she can tell me about how it went for her.” 

Bobby’s face didn’t soften, but he believed him.

“You on a bedtime now,” he said gruffly.

Jack crossed his arms and sank back into the couch cushions. “Gotta get up to walk the damn dog.”

“And make your wife breakfast.”

Again, Jack started. “The fuck told you that?”

Bobby cracked a shit-eating grin. “Who do you think?”

“Just what I need,” Jack grumbled. “My wife and my brother titterin’ on about me behind my back.”

“She’s good for you.”

“I been sayin’ that for damn near how long?”

Bobby let out a huff that was almost a laugh. He clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder and looked directly in his eyes again. “I’m proud of you. Always knew you had it in you.”

Jack twisted away. “Wouldn’t be anywhere without her.”

Bobby scoffed. “Like she keeps tellin’ me, none of this would stick if you didn’t want it yourself. Be proud of that.”

“You sound like my fuckin’ therapist.”

This time Bobby did laugh, full-bellied, his head thrown back just so. “Lord Almighty, when she told me she got you in to see a shrink. That girl’s a damn miracle worker.”

Jack couldn’t help but grin. “You have no idea,” he said quietly, all of the sudden missing Ally more than he had all night. He wondered, before he could stop himself, if she felt the same, wherever she was across town. If the thought of spending just one measly evening apart made her chest like to explode the way it did Jack’s. Likely not, she’s made of much stronger stuff than he.

He let the quiet lull over him and Bobby for a bit while the announcer on the screen droned on about Johnny Who-Gives-A-Shit hitting his best score to date, therein proving Jack’s earlier point. The game went to commercial.

“You really don’t have to stay,” he told Bobby again. 

Bobby grunted. “Everything’s always about you. Maybe I wanna stay and say hi to an old friend.”

“Maybe I wanna fuck my wife into our favorite couch without a fuckin’ audience standin’ by.”

Bobby was out of his seat faster than Jack had seen him move in decades. Jack howled.

“Fuckin’ still seventeen years old,” Bobby, having decided Jack was only mostly joking, eased himself back down. “I’ll leave when the game’s over.”

The commercial break had ended. Back on the screen, Freddy Couldn’t-Give-a-Fuck was walking across the overly green grass, twirling his club like a goddamn pimp cane. Apparently, he was the favorite to “win” the Open this year. Jack hoped he knocked himself in the nuts with that club and had to take an “L.”

“You know,” he said. “The day I asked Ally to marry me, Noodles was tellin’ me about how good it gets once you find a way out. Life, I mean. The wife and the kids and stayin’ in the same place every damn day.”

Bobby grunted, not bothering to tear his eyes away from the screen. “That why you did it?”

“Sorta.” Jack paused. “But he was right. I mean, I knew he was at the time, but he really was…”

“…But you had no idea.”

“None,” Jack grinned. “Used to be so…bitter. About everything. Now, I keep wakin’ up every day expectin’ to still miss it all the way I did before. Then I make Ally and me pancakes for breakfast and all that goes away, like it was never anything.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” said Bobby, glancing up from the TV just a bit. “You had something to say.”

“Yeah, I said it,” Jack nodded. “Don’t know if I’ve got anythin’ else left, but if I do and Ally is the only one who ever hears it, that’ll be enough. More, even. Fuckin’ Noodles, man. I keep sayin’ Ally ’n me have gotta get out there and see him and Paulette and the kids.”

“Thought you were invitin’ them out here for Christmas.”

Jack did a double-take and scowled. Nothing stank quite so like one of Bobby Maine’s shit-eating grins.

“Son of a bitch.”

Bobby threw his head back and let out a loud _whoop!_ of a laugh, clapping his hands. It was a hard, belly-shaking laugh. The kind Jack hadn’t heard from his brother in fuckin’ ages. He couldn’t help having to smile back even if he hated himself a little for it.

“I guess that means you’re comin’ then.”

Bobby went on laughing, quieter now, to himself. “My baby brother,” he chuckled. “Grown the hell up and let his woman turn him into Ward fucking Cleaver.”

Jack snatched the remote from his hand and flipped the station to UFC.

 

 

* * *

 

Rez wouldn’t stop hitting her, and normally, Ally would’ve been decked him for it. But one, she could barely feel anything at all right about now because two, her body felt too heavy to even sit up let alone throw enough force behind her arm to punch out her asshole manager for interrupting her sleep.

Still, the hand batting against the side of her face like a fucking bongo drum wouldn't do him any favors when she did get her strength back.

“ _Quiddit_ …”

She tried to roll away from his hand, push her face further into the pillow, but Rez’ other hand was holding her in place and the more she twisted her head away the harder it ached; the harder _everything_ ached.

The farther Ally was pulled out of her sleep paralysis and back into her body the sharper the pain became. She smarted all over; from her legs and arms to her ass and throat; fuck even her scalp hurt, every follicle sitting at the top of her head like tiny little needles stabbing into her skull. Fuck, had she done a show last night? What _was_ this?

“Up you get, Ally. Come on, that’s it.”

Rez’ voice was strained with the frayed edges of whatever patience Ally must have exhausted in however long it had taken him to get her this far out of her coma. Feeling bad now for wanting to punch him before, she went willingly as he tugged her up by her underarms into a sitting position. She wasn’t ready for it, though. The room was still spinning and she pitched forward involuntarily as her head pounded harder.

“That’s it,” Rez said again, catching her before she folded over herself. “Come on, then.”

“Where we goin’?” Ally heard herself slur. Good fucking point: where _were_ they going? And where were they now? She didn’t remember performing last night. Whose bed had she been in?

“To the shower, first.”

“Huh…?” She could barely fucking stand. And where was there a shower? Ally’s eyes darted around the room in front of her. It was fucking huge. Mostly dimmed, save for the light coming from the bathroom, which was far enough away to make Ally want to give up right then and there and go back to sleep.

What hotel was this? And when and how had she gotten here? And where was Jack? Was he at home? She thought she’d told Rez no more touring without her husband…

“Don’t wanna…” Ally slurred. Her head dropped to her chest so hard she was sure it’d roll off. It hurt so bad. Everything hurt so bad. Even with her eyes closed the room was still spinning. Like when you get off of one of those spinning rides they have at Six Flags, where the thing goes so fast you stick to the wall and after you first come off it you feel like you can feel the fucking Earth turning under your feet and you can barely walk afterwards? Like that. It made all the muscles and stuff in Ally’s body drop all the way down to her gut and she thought she might puke. Like actually.

She did. Rez moved out of the way just in time as she blew chunks all over herself and the covers of the bed she was still sitting up in. Rez sighed, once again down to his last nerve.

“Sorry,” Ally coughed, hitching back another round as her gag reflex kicked in.

“Never mind,” Rez said. “We were going to have to clean you up anyhow.”

He threw back the puke-stained covers and a gust of cold air blew over Ally, and she froze, mortified to realize for the first time that she was completely naked beneath the bedclothes.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Rez, half guiding, half dragging her to her feet, his grip pressing Ally’s upper arms to her sides, preventing her from covering her exposed breasts and privates.

Walking was impossible even with Rez holding her up. There was a searing, shooting pain between Ally’s legs that seemed to go all the way around her lower abdomen to her hips to her lower back and ass; worse than any cramps she’d ever had in her life, making every step agony. Every time she dragged one of her legs—themselves like giant blocks of melted lead—she half-expected her hips to snap off in protest, splitting her straight down the middle. She fell four times on the way to the bathroom. On the fourth, Rez gave up and hooked an arm around her middle and basically carried her under his arm like a football into the standalone shower. Where, upon being released, Ally’s lead brick legs gave out a final time and she heard herself cry out as she landed on her knees on the stone tile of the shower floor.

Now slumped in the corner, her head having stopped spinning enough to know it was pressed into the too-nice wall of a too-nice shower of a too-bright bathroom inside a bedroom too big for them to be in a hotel; Ally had a question.

“Where’re we, Rez?”

Rez was standing over her, fiddling with something. He didn't look down. He said, “Paul’s house, don’t you remember?”

Ally didn’t but Rez was pulling something off the wall— ** _and it was cold!!!_** —a shower head, she realized only after the freaking jet stream of fucking freezing water hit her square in the face.

“It’s cold!!”

“It’ll sober you up,” said Rez, coming closer with the shower head in hand, blasting it directly in her face before Ally could shield herself. The water choked her scream as it hit, her nose and eyes burning, her gag reflex flaring again as the onslaught shot to the back of her throat and mixed with the bile, drowning her, almost; the resulting coughing fit leaving Ally shivering and struggling to stay up on all fours as the pressure refused to let up. 

“Sit back,” said Rez. “You’ve still got vomit all over your chest.”

Embarrassed all over again, Ally scrambled to do as she was told. Her arms were fairing better than her legs, but the pain in her wrist nearly sent her crashing to the floor again when she used them to push herself up and back into a sitting position. This, she realized, now finally at an angle to get a good look at them, was because they were purple. She held them up to Rez.

“Why…?”

He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Sit on your ass,” he said. “Open your legs.”

That sent the flush of heat already burning up her cheeks spreading down to the rest of her, setting the water to almost room temperature. Her legs were still numbed but she could feel them enough now to move them out from under her bottom. She spread them. 

“Wider,” Rez said. 

Ally complied, unable to look anywhere but at the floor as the millions of icy pinpricks pounding from the head above her bore down on her most sensitive flesh. She watched as a steady river of ruddy water trickled down the drain, her eyes stinging with humiliation. 

“I’m bleeding,” she said unnecessarily, unsure why her voice was breaking. She clamped a hand over between her legs and snapped them shut, bringing them up to her chest to hide her face in her aching knees, doing her best to shuffle herself back into the corner of the shower, giving her back, shivering, to Rez and the water.

“Not really,” she heard Rez say, clearer now that the water had suddenly stopped. “It’s already dried. Paul likes it rough, apparently. Might’ve guessed.”

Ally shattered. She knew what those words meant strung together but in the moment, coming from Rez’ mouth, they seemed to be hovering above her in midair, jumbled and unintelligible. Paul, from _Paul’s house, don’t you remember._ House. Paul’s house, with the gorgeous piano, and the couches with—

“… _Ally_ …”

—the wine. Paul, whose mother-in-law was Italian, and  _Ally and I can bond over our hard-drinking Italian matriarchs while we wait for you to come back._ Paul—

“…stop it, Ally. Stop—!”

—who likes it rough. Paul from  _Fuck, how are you so fucking tight? Old Jack still too blitzed to take you right,_ huh? Paul who'd—

_—Fuck, you’re fucking perfect, Sweetness—_

“ _For fuck’s sake, Ally stop screaming!_ ”

Her wrists were purple but her thighs and her chest were ruined: blue. Black. Bite marks. Fingerprints. Fingers.  _Perfect, like a fucking virgin._

_“—enough, fucking stop already!”_

_Love all that noise you’re makin,’ Sweet girl. I want you to fucking_ feel _me in the morning._

“ _STOP!_ ”

Ally wasn’t sure if it was her or Rez who’d screamed it, but he was still shaking her and she was still trying to shake him off. In the end, they both won, he let go and her voice died out and she buried her face back into her knees, unable to look at him. He got up and Ally was half grateful and half worried when she heard him walk away. He was back, though, dropping something heavy and warm around Ally’s back and shoulders.

“C’mon, get up,” he said, holding the towel around her shoulders as he pulled her to her feet. Ally complied, letting him lead her, ghostlike, over to the side of the jacuzzi tub where he sat her down. She couldn’t help but notice how they both avoided each other’s eyes while he dried her off. The silence was unbearable.

“You didn’t come back.”

Rez didn’t look up from his drying.

“No,” he said. He threw the towel on the floor behind him then, to Ally’s surprise, reached behind her to grab a folded up pile of clothes.

“Put these on.” He dropped the bundle in her lap then stood and walked over to the sink and began to srub his hands clean. 

These weren’t hers’, Ally noticed, but they looked like something she might wear on one of her “lazy girl” days at the studio, a dark gray Henley and black yoga pants, socks and tennis shoes. The feeling was mostly back in her arms and legs now, and she felt _everything_  as she stretched and bent to dress herself; the ache in her wrists and shoulders as she pulled the shirt over her head; the swelling around her breasts and nipples as they chafed against the fabric; the creak and twinge of her thighs and hips as she worked the pants up and over her legs and ass; every part of her on fire in one way or another.

“You bought clothes for me?”

The words hurt. She really had screamed herself hoarse in the shower to the point that now, even breathing through her mouth sent needle-sharp pinpricks of pain shooting down her throat. But she had to know.

“I didn’t buy them,” Rez said, staring forward in the direction of the bathroom mirror. “They’re from that gym bag you left at the studio earlier this week. I made sure they were clean.”

Ally hated his voice; that it had no inflection, that the sound of it was only made more unbearable by the fact that he wouldn’t look her way.

“You went to get them when you left?”

Not that that even mattered, like, at all, considering everything. But it did, somehow. Ally couldn’t explain it but it _did_. To her.

Rez sighed, fully irritated now. “I had them in my car when I came to pick you up tonight.”

All the air left Ally’s lungs. She let her head fall into her hands, the strain on her wrists causing her whole upper body to tremble. Her eyes stung and began to leak. A sob choked and died at the top of her throat, the sound it released, a low, pitiful whine, like a dog just before it’s put down. Pathetic, even to Ally’s own ears. Loathsome, as if she couldn’t feel any more pitiful and cheap.

Apparently, Rez felt the same. Ally tensed as she heard his boots stomp across the tiled floor and then his scoff when he came to a top in front of her. 

“You really fucked us, Ally,” he said, his voice turning low and steely. Ally didn’t need to pull her hands from her face to tell how tightly his fists were clenched. “You really, really fucked us. All of us; yourself, me, the label, all the—” He took a deep breath and Ally felt a shift in the air around her, a hand—or fist—being thrust through it, maybe. She shifted back in her seat. “— _Fucking_ hours we spent. Weeks. Months. Putting your album together, that Grammy campaign—do you know how much money went into that? The promotion? Do—Have you any idea how fucking embarrassing it was for me to go through all that wheedling and groveling, getting Paul and the rest of the Devo guys on board with the idea of you _headlining_ a solo Transatlantic tour off a debut album—how much of a fucking slap in the face it was for me _to do all of that_ , only for you to call everything off because you didn’t want to leave your washout, man child of a hubby all alone for four months? Have any idea what you almost did to us?!”

Ally’s voice had retreated to somewhere far at the bottom of her throat. She swallowed once, twice. It didn’t come back. She shook her head.

“No,” Rez bit back. “You don’t. But it doesn’t matter because we fixed it. Better than fixed it; you’re one of Paul’s girls now, we’re set.”

“ _I’m not!_ ” Ally spat, the cry bursting out of her, a hollow, croaked out shriek. “ _Fuck you_ , _I’m not!_ I’m _nobody’s_ ‘girl’. I’m Jack’s girl!”

Hands shot out and tore her face from her hands, yanking it back by the roots of her hair. Ally stared up at Rez, pissed off and horrified and locked in place

“ _You’re hurting me—!_ ”

“Listen,” he said, lower and steelier than before. “In this business, especially when you’re just starting out like you are now, you fuck up, you get fucked. Jack knows that. His brother knows that. Paul and I know that; and now you do too. You fucked up, Ally, so enough with the whining and the crocodile tears. No one’s going to want to hear it.”

Tears she didn’t know she had left to shed were streaming down Ally’s face, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying in vain to rip her herself from Rez’ grip. But he was firm. Defeated, Ally felt her chin dip as low as he’d allow; and just like that, she was released, her head dropping down so hard she nearly chipped her chin on her sternum.

“Not even Jack?”

Ally stiffened, shaken by her own words. She hadn’t even had a chance to think them before they’d just blurted themselves out. They sounded like a challenge and yet the act of saying them somehow brought her lower. Ally was sick. Jack was her everything but she’d never wanted to feel like he was her last thing; the only thing she had left to shield her when everything was stripped away. She felt less than naked. Is it possible to be hollow when you’re not even sure if there’s still an outer shell for you to lay claim to? Her hands came up and covered her face again, as though that was going to protect her from Rez’ sneering rebuttal.

“Tell him if you want,” he said. “Hell, pull down your pants and show him Paul’s handprints all over your thighs. I’m sure the evidence of the only thing he’s got going for him getting plowed by a man his brother’s age will have Jack crawling back down the bottle faster than if he’d caught Paul taking you in your marital bed.”

Ally lurched forward violently, nearly falling to her knees as whatever else remained in her stomach after her earlier purge rose up into her mouth. She punched a fist to her lips and forced it back down, refusing to give Rez any further satisfaction. He went on as if he hadn’t seen her.

“Besides,” he said. “Jack knows full well how these things work, I can assure you. Why do you think he’d been so worried about you taking this meeting? He’s a washed up drunk but he isn’t stupid. He’s been in the business long enough to know what a female pop star “having dinner with the label execs” is code for. He probably assumed you’re old enough to know, too.”

“I didn’t—I—you— _You, you know I didn’t_ —”

“You did, Ally, don’t be daft. You’re not some little ingenue, some blushing virgin. You had to have known on some level what you were coming over for when Paul said he wanted to _hear what you had for him_. Did you really think he wanted to reminisce over his ex-mother-in-law with you? What man is ever _that_ excited to talk about his wife’s _mother_? You knew what was up. Just as you _know_ what it’ll do to Jack to have you go throwing yourself and Paul all in his face.”

He was full of shit, but right about that one thing. But just as Ally wasn’t some dainty little ingenue. he wasn’t some fucking Machiavelli-like manipulator. All he could do was talk shit, she had to remember that. If Jack had known, if Jack had had any idea, there’s no way he would’ve been okay with her—The thought wasn’t even worth continuing down.

But it made Ally think of going home, all those years ago, to the Boyfriend, whose name she’d spent the rest of twenty-three in a blackout stupor trying to forget, and who she’d shared that ratty studio in Brooklyn with; a whole day late, face ruined, shaking so bad she could barely get her key in the door, she'd fallen into His arms, crying so hard she could barely get out what had happened, and how he’d held her until she’d fallen asleep. And how in the morning said he could barely stand to look at her, that she should have known what that sketchy guy was after when he’d only wanted to take her out, it was their band, after all, not just hers’ and the guy knew that _,_ and  _Why didn’t you just tell him to fuck off, I’ve seen punch out guys twice your size, Ally, what the fuck? You had to have been okay with  it on some level if it meant you getting a record deal! I can’t believe you’d sell yourself out like that. Sell_ us _out. Sell_ me _out! Is that where we’re at now, you’ll put out for any schmuck in knockoff Armani promising to make you a star?!_

And that was Rez’ game, to try and make Ally see that same look of disbelief and disgust on Jack’s face, to imagine going home, distraught, and revealing the truth to her frantic husband and watching his face twist up and all the love die in his eyes and hear _Touching you makes me sick. It’s like I have no idea now where you’ve been or who you even are anymore_ , from her Jack, who hid love songs he’d written for her in her song book, and packed her fucking lunch for the day so she’d remember to take a break and eat, and had told her himself he’d never felt he had a home anywhere until she came to live with him. Her Jack, who thought she was beautiful and told her so every minute of every fucking day. Except

_You’re so fucking ugly._

_You’re embarrassing._

_I failed you._

He’d apologized for that, though. He’d said those things because he’d been drinking, not because he’d meant any of it. He hadn’t.

But that was when things had gotten really bad, because of his drinking. And after their fight it’d only gotten worse.

But then he’d gone to rehab and ever since things had been better than ever. Jack was swimming, and cooking, and writing music with her every single day—songs for her, that he only wanted her to sing. They were going to have a big Christmas this year, invite all their family, all their friends, Bobby was even going to come, he’d said in his last email. And Jack was going to take her to Paris this spring.

And if he found out—if he saw the handprints on her thighs or the bite marks around her breasts or if the soreness in her hips and between her legs didn’t go away in the next couple hours and Jack saw her limping every time she took a step—if he found out. if he asked why she couldn’t walk right. if he _saw_ why she couldn’t walk right. if she let him see why. if she let him see her body, then

_—Touching you makes me sick—_

_—You’re so fucking ugly—_

_—I failed you—_

_—You can punch out a cop but you can’t punch out some past his prime label suit?—_

_—You just need everyone to like you so badly, you’ll even go so far as to—_

_—You’re so fucking embarrassing—_

This was Rez’ game, but it wasn’t like he needed to stack the deck. It was hard to imagine Jack saying anything like what He, or Rez, or any other asshole Ally had come across in her time in and out of the music industry had ever said to her; but it was unbearable to picture the possibility of his face, snarled and furious like it had been that one time, and saying all those hurtful things again, and meaning them this time around, about _this_. At twenty-three, Ally had thought she’d loved the Boyfriend, and his rejection in the aftermath of what had happened to her had damn near killed her. All those months she’d spent trying to come back from that—and had she ever? Really? There was a less honest time in her life when Ally would have said that that fucking wannabe Lee Ranaldo piece of shit was the last thing on her mind. Once a wound stopped bleeding, that meant it was all better, right? If she couldn’t say his name, not even in her own head, that just meant it was buried under months’ of drunken blackouts and empty hookups and a few too many seventy-two-hour stints in the ER. It didn’t mean anything—What was more important was: if that nobody, that fucking ghost, that nameless, talentless, tainted shadow from a lifetime ago could do that to her when Ally _knew_ now, for a fact, that whatever they’d had between them hadn’t been love, because Ally knew love now, knew Jack’s love, _knew_ how fucking terrified she’d been to lose it to either his overdosing or to him coming out of rehab and realizing he’d saddled himself with a butterface on the tail end of a years-long drinking binge—

—But that hadn’t happened. Jack had come home, like he’d said he’d wanted to when she’d gone to visit him, and they’d been doing so good ever since. He’d been so happy, and telling her so; how happy he was, how happy she’d made him all along, how much he loved her, how the life they had together made him never want to drink again, ever. And he’d stayed true to that, all these months. The longest he’d been sober since he was a teenager, he and Bobby both said. Jack loved her sober, and he loved her drunk. But would he look at her and see the best thing in his life, the one thing worth staying sober for, when he saw it was covered in another man’s marks?

That was Rez talking.

He would—This was Ally talking—But would he love it, sober? And once he wasn’t sober anymore, what would the real truth be?

Bigger than that; would he survive a relapse? Would Ally, if the reason he didn’t was because of her?—

She almost hadn’t before; all those weeks of worry while Jack was in rehab and she was wringing her hands all through the end of her North American tour. Weeks and weeks of worrying over how Jack was doing in therapy, of whether he’d get out this time and stay clean, of whether he missed her as much as she did him—or at all, or if the fancy had worn off now that he had a clear head, and if, once he was out, he’d be in the wind without so much as a goodbye, the divorce papers sent by way of Rez. Ally had lost fifteen pounds and countless nights’ sleep during all those weeks of angsting, and that had been her own mind toying with her; based on nothing but a history of failed relationships and unresolved mommy issues—nothing that had anything to do with Jack or Ally and Jack.

But if this thing, here, that had happened tonight; if Jack found out about it, and it wrecked him, andwrecked their marriage, too; well that would wreck Ally for good. There’d be no coming back.

Rez didn’t need her to play his game, his hand was set and he’d already read hers’—and God, by now, hadn’t everyone? The Sad Ugly Duckling who’ll do anything not to be thrown away, she was grade-fucking-one. 

Ally could feel him standing over her, waiting impatiently while she gathered the strength to pull her hands away. He met her small nod with a _Thought so_ smirk, too bored to gloat. Ally sank lower.

“What happens now,” she whispered, her voice almost gone from the tears and vomiting. She bowed her head back down.

Rez heaved another sigh, past agitated by this point. “What do you mean? It’s nearly dawn, we’ve been up almost all night, so we go home, sleep tonight off, then meet up at the studio tomorrow so we can work on that song you sent me a couple nights ago. I agree, by the way, I like it for a single. _Ally_ didn’t have any ballads so this one’ll be a nice change-up.”

He took Ally by both hands and pulled her to her feet, then wrapped an arm around her, holding her up as he walked them out of the bathroom and into Paul’s dimly-lit bedroom, where, squinting under the change of light, Ally could just barely make out his bed, unmade and empty. She didn’t know what would have been worse seeing him there, sleeping everything that had just happened to Ally off like it was just another night; or him being right there, wide awake, having heard Ally’s meltdown and her entire exchange with Rez, totally unbothered and on his way to wave Rez off so he could give her a kiss goodbye. But that he wasn’t there at all, and that Ally had no idea where he’d gone and knew she couldn’t ask Rez. That Paul would be around when he was around, and when he wasn’t, would be pulling the strings behind Ally’s career, her music, her image, her exposure, her publicity; popping in and out of recording sessions and industry gatherings, and demanding business dinners between himself and Ally or whoever else as he saw fit: Always there; just like what had happened here tonight would _always_ _be there_.

That trumped everything.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author of this story is a shamelessly thirsty bitch who THRIVES off of your comments, she longer, the better, and the faster you get chapter 3. 
> 
> As always, feel free to come cry over Jack and Ally with me on Tumblr, I'm @flaminganakin


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Ally and Jack are probably Wal Mart people, if I'm being honest. But I hate Wal Mart and love Target and this is my story so I do what I want, lol.

 

 

For a moment when he first woke up Jack was damn petrified. It was morning, Bobby was long gone, probably, and Jack was in bed curled around Ally, his head over on her pillow and her tucked in his arms the way they woke most mornings. Only Jack was sure the last thing he remembered after Bobby snatched the remote back from him was his falling asleep to the fuckin’ U.S. Open, with his brother still right there next to him on the couch. What made sense—or would to anyone who had any—was that Ally had come home sometime after he’d conked out, and she and Bobby had put him to bed together, and the two of them had probably hung out and caught up for a bit before Ally came and joined him in bed. That would make sense. But the brain of an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise, almost never did, and when in recovery it relied on routine more than anything to keep things straight. Or Jack’s did, anyway.

That was to say, Jack had had a few too many nights over the years of being one place and waking up somewhere completely different for him to not be fucking spooked at finding himself somewhere he didn’t remember being when he’d first nodded off. Memory gaps were a huge fucking neon sign that he’d fucked up at some point between Bobby leaving and Ally coming home; and fuck, he didn’t want to believe he _had_ fucked up—not when he’d been doing so good; good enough to get Bobby to wanna come around again, even. But there were a lot of things Jack had never wanted to believe himself capable of doing only to have gone and done and wake up the next day sorry as shit, and this would be just one more in a long list of times…

…He hadn’t. Jack realized, at just about the point where the panic had gotten comfy, that nothing on him stank of booze, and that his mouth wasn’t dry, and that he hadn’t pissed himself while he’d been conked out, and that he couldn’t feel any sign of a headache coming on aside from the one he’d nearly given himself trying to figure out what the fuck had happened between last night and the sudden realization that he didn’t have to wonder anymore because Ally was there to tell him.

She should have been reason number one to begin with. She was, after all, right where she always was when he woke; asleep on her side on the pillow next to his, her back to his chest, his arm still slung around her waist. She must’ve gotten back hella late if Jack couldn’t even remember them going to bed. He didn’t want to wake her, she obviously needed to recoup from whatever last night had been. He just had to hold her, though, just for a minute, just until his heart stopped racing and this—whatever it was, a flashback; or a panic attack, is probably what his therapist would call it—went away.

Jack weaseled his other arm between the bed and Ally, pressing hard into the mattress so as not to jostle and wake her, and pressed himself further into her back. Burying his face in her hair and breathing in the remnants of the washed out scent of apricots and marigolds, he pulled her closer, and let his hands wander down her waist, up her shirt to her belly and beneath the waistband of her sleep pants, brushing against her hips and pressing lower—

“Oww…”

Ally stirred, whimpering in her sleep. Jack withdrew his hands, backed away, and froze.

“Ow…” He heard Ally cry out a second time, softly, a sleepy half-wail, as she was still only barely awake. She rolled away from him and her hand moved down to where his had just been, as though to nurse the invisible wound. “Ow, please…’t hurts, please…”

“Fuck,” Jack said, unfreezing himself in slow motion so as to not completely rustle Ally from her sleep. “‘m sorry, baby, I didn’t realize…”

It was one of the main things you were supposed to keep track of as a guy, as a husband, definitely, your girl’s…time, so to speak. Especially when you’re with one who gets pains like Ally does, so that way you know when not to bother her. Jack was usually pretty good about it but he must’ve slipped up this month.

“You want me to go get the stuff?” he asked aloud. Not loud enough to wake her on its own, but loud enough for her to hear if she was already. “I can stop at the store after I walk Charlie?”

Ally didn’t answer. Jack leaned over her and listened to her breathing to try and gauge whether she’d gone back to sleep. He saw she’d curled herself up even tighter, her lips pulled down in a grimace, her face all scrunched up and shuddery like she ached enough to cry, even in her sleep. They hadn’t been this bad in a while, probably not since Jack had gone to rehab. Not for the first time did he feel like complete and utter shit about this.

They didn’t even keep cough syrup in the house anymore since Jack had come home, so that meant no Tylenol, no aspirin, no migraine medicine, and nothing for Ally’s cramps when they came once a month. She took it all in stride the way she did every other drawback to having him in her life, keeping her Midol and Excedrin at the studio where she practiced, and making due with bubble baths and a hot water bottle when she was at home. Jack could say til he was blue in the face how much he hated that she had to put herself through all that shit because of him, but that was what his therapist said was “counterproductive thinking” and Ally what called “self-flagellating horseshit” and none of it did her any good; so instead Jack made himself useful during this time of the month by being sure to have enough chocolate chips on hand to make those pancakes Ally said were better than the ones at IHOP, and that she was stocked up on that lavender oil shit she liked to put on her pillow before bed, and that he didn’t fucking lose it or roll his eyes or even _think_ about reaching for a bottle of scotch when she flipped out and started screaming at him for taking off his boots at the piano and leaving them there _for_ _THE HUNDRED MILLIONTH TIME, JACK, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!_

It was the least he could do.

After taking Charlie for his walk, Jack peeked back into their room to check on Ally once more. Finding her still asleep in the exact position he’d left her in, he scribbled down a note letting her know he’d run out to the store and that he’d be back probably before she’d even get it, and left it on the nightstand. Then he headed back out for the Target, Charlie riding shotgun in the cab of the pickup with him.

On the way back he called Bobby, who, apparently, also wasn’t up yet, as the call almost went to voicemail before Bobby picked up on the last ring.

“Couldn’t fuckin’ believe Ally when she told me you were up with the sun these days.”

Jack laughed. “It’s past nine, you old fuck.”

“And you’re up and drivin’ by the sound of it,” Bobby grumbled. “You walk the dog and eat your Wheaties yet?”

“Walked the dog and took him to the store with me. Had to pick up some stuff for Ally.”

“Girl stuff?”

“Mm.”

“Forget I called you Ward Cleaver,” Bobby said. “You’re a regular Desperate Housewife.”

“And fuckin’ proud of it,” said Jack. He let a moment pass before turning to the real reason he’d called.

“Listen,” he said in a quiet, too-subtle voice he knew Bobby would see through right away. “I nodded off last night, right? Before you left? While you were still watchin’ the game, I mean.”

There was a short pause on the other end. Jack could hear Bobby through it, trying to suss out what he was getting at, exactly.

“Yeah…” he said slowly. “The game ended and you were snorin’ like a hog. Ally still hadn’t come home so I just put you to bed and saw myself out.”

“Oh.”

The word came out short and Jack let the silence followed hang, unsure of what else to say after that. It made sense. He’d been expecting something similar, after all so it wasn’t like the revelation shook him or anything. It was just…

“Just…wake me up next time, alright?”

Bobby didn’t say anything in response at first.

“Any particular reason why?”

By then, Jack had pulled into the driveway and turned the truck off but hadn’t made any move to let himself out of the car. His kept his seatbelt on and had one hand still clutched around the steering wheel as he sagged in the drivers’ seat, letting his head thunk against the headrest. To his right, Charlie shifted around in the passenger seat, laying himself across the center console and his head in Jack’s lap in silent support.

“Just…” Jack closed his eyes and fought for the words, the right ones, the ones that saying would have him feeling like less of a drunk, of a pansy; or wouldn’t send his heart rate into overdrive and have him sweating and tearing up on the phone to his big brother. “Just…This morning I didn’t remember where I was or how I’d gotten there or what had happened the night before, and usually when that happens it means—I just-I have routines now. Helps keep me straight. I didn’t—I’m not...gonna mess up or nothin.’ Just, this morning, IworriedImight’ve. ‘C-cause I couldn’t remember and that used to mean I’d—. So…”

“Alright.”

Jack sat up, startling Charlie out of his lap.

“Huh?”

“Fine,” Bobby said. “Got it. For next time.”

That was it? Jack sat up straighter.

“Yeah?” he said, whispered more like.

“Mm-hm,” Bobby yawned. “You home yet?”

“Yep,” said Jack.”Gonna make Ally breakfast in bed. Pancakes.”

“Ward-fuckin’-Cleaver,” Bobby grumbled, then burst out laughing. “In a frilly pink apron.”

Jack grit his teeth to keep the smile off his face. Pointless since he knew Bobby could hear it on the other end.

“Embroidered it myself,” he said. “It’s dry clean only,”

Bobby laughed harder, hooting and hacking like their dad’s. “Ally says your hot-cakes are better than IHOP, don’t be surprised if I show up for fuckin’ brunch one Sunday.”

Jack’s chest seized at that. His mouth fell open and his aching teeth grinned wide and fucking wild. “Just call first, so I remember to take my rollers out.”

Jack sat through seven whole seconds of Bobby’s cackling before hitting the “End” button; then unbuckled his seatbelt, popped open the driver’s side door, and sat back and watched a restless Charlie tread across his lap and vault into a run/jump/roll straight onto the grass, unable to remember the last time his heart was so full.

 

 

* * *

 

Ally came stumbling into the kitchen sometime later, at right about when Jack was only just taking the second pancake off the skillet. Having come home to find her still asleep, he’d guessed rightly that she wouldn’t come around for another hour or so and had decided to hold off on starting breakfast til about when she’d be up for it.

“Morning,” he said over his shoulder as soon as he heard her come padding up behind him. “I was gonna bring it to you. You can lay back down if you want.”

Ally said nothing to that at first. Jack waited. Worried when the silence continued, he flicked the burner off and turned around to give her his full attention.

She didn’t look pissed, which Jack supposed was a point for him; Ally wasn’t exactly a Ms. Morning type of person, but she was usually more talkative than this first thing, even during this time of the month. Last night must’ve been a rough one, she looked wrung out. She wasn’t frowning so much as she was un-smiling. Her eyes and nose and cheeks were all puffy, but her face, somehow, seemed thinner than it had been yesterday. Or maybe it was just that all of her looked smaller, which was saying a lot given that she was already fucking pint-sized. It didn’t help that the shirt and pants she was wearing looked like they were falling off her. Had she been losing weight? She’d said something to him a couple months ago about Rez wanting her to drop a couple pounds. That had been a fight Jack had thought he’d won. They ate together practically every morning and night, was she skipping lunch then? She was always saying the lunches he made her looked too good to eat…

Jack put that can of worms back on the shelf for the time being while he focused on what was important. Ally was ready for him, reaching for him first as he gathered her in his arms and held her close. He felt her bawling into his chest before he heard her; rough, choking sobs that sent her whole body rattling with each breath and made Jack’s own body tremble the harder she pressed herself into him. It hurt. Fuck, it hurt. This was all on him. Everything must’ve gone to shit last night and it was all on fucking him. Fuck.

“It’s okay, baby,” he cooed as he brushed back her bedhead and squeezed her tighter. “Whatever they said last night, whatever happened, we’re gonna fix it.”

Ally’s sobs by that point had tapered off to a low, wet moan. She peeked her head up just enough to get out a thick sniffle then buried her face back into the wet spot on his chest, her hands clutched at the back of his shirt. Jack rocked them back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet, all the while sifting through the near-empty rolodex in his head, looking for one—just one—name he could call on, one bridge he hadn’t managed to burn quite yet. Anyone.

It would have to be Bobby, there was no one else Jack could think of, that he could trust, that would associate with him and not screw Ally over or take advantage or—

Bobby liked Ally, so it wouldn’t be for him. He’d do it for her. And maybe it wasn’t too soon after their last talk to call him for a favor. Maybe.

Anyway. “It’s not over, you know. You just won them three Grammys, so even if they’re pissed about the tour, they’re not about to dump you while you’re still hot.” Maybe. “They’d be stupid to.” Labels often were, infamously so. “Everything’s gonna be fine. I promise.”

Ally believed him, Jack could feel it in the way the hands at his back let up just a little. He could see it in her eyes when she tipped her head back, still-unsmiling, but her face less scrunched and sickly-looking, relieved somehow, or at least fighting to be.

“I love you so much,” she whispered, pulling back to hold his face in her hands. “I wouldn’t trade anything for the time we had this summer. Nothing.”

Her eyes began to well up again, Jack wiped at them with the pads of his thumbs. She kissed his palm and he brought her back against him.

“What did they say, though?” It wasn’t really his business and he didn’t want to upset her, but Jack had to know just how bad it was so he could find a way to fix it. He had to. This was more his mess than hers’ in a way.

“They want the follow up, still,” she said in a hollow, stringy voice. Jack breathed a sigh of relief and knew Ally felt it when he felt her smile against his diaphragm. “They didn’t exactly say but it’ll probably be a while before Rez’ll get them to agree to send me across the pond, even if this next one debuts at number one too.”

“It will.”

“It better, Rez said.” She said those last two words in an almost whisper and Jack saw a flash of red.

“It’s his ass on the line more than yours,’” Jack told her for probably the hundredth time. “Don’t let him make you think he made you. He’ll be the one they’ll look to replace first, not you.”

Ally said nothing to that, and Jack was kind of glad. She hated when he talked shit about the guy and he was sick of fighting over that putz.

“You hungry?” he said. “I got strawberries when I went out to the store.”

“You went to the store?”

Guess she missed the note. Jack pointed vaguely in the direction of the plastic Target bags on the counter.

“Got the stuff,” he said. “We were outta chocolate chips, and I got you that Haagen Daz you like, and..”

He trailed off as Ally went over and started pulling out stuff, wincing a little at the weird look she gave him when she pulled out the Tampax box.

“Did I miss something?”

Now Jack was confused. Those were the right kind, he’d checked almost-empty box in the bathroom before he left. “Said you were hurtin’ this morning. Thought it might be…”

Ally’s eyes went round. “Oh…Yeah. Thank you, you didn’t have to—”

He waved her off. It was always the same thing, she talked about him never expecting people to treat him right, but she was even worse about it, sometimes.

“They still botherin’ you?”

“Huh?”

“Way you’re holdin’ yourself. You’re limping.”

Ally hugged her middle, self-conscious. She looked away.

“Wanna go lie down?’ Jack said. He gestured to the stove and to the fruit still in bags on the counter. “I can bring all this to you. When it’s ready.”

Ally shook her head. “‘m not really that hungry.” She came back over to him. “I just wanna lie down. Come with me?”

Weird. She ate like a fucking grizzly when she was like this. “You sure? There’s bacon.”

Ally shook her head, wrapping herself around him again. She sagged, exhausted, pouring all her weight into him. She probably was too tired to eat, come to think of it.

“Just lie with me,” she said in a small voice.

Obliging her, Jack bent down and scooped her up, not missing the small hiss of pain Ally gave as he adjusted her. He shushed her with a kiss to her temple when she tried to apologize for it. Before he’d left for the store, he’d made a mental note of the hot water bottle in the linen closet by the first aid kit, and after getting Ally settled he made to go fill it for her, only she stopped him.

“I was gonna get th—”

“No, just…”

She tugged at his sleeve, and Jack followed her down onto the bed, settling on his back and waiting for her to claim her normal spot. She came, laying her head first and the rest of her along him, sliding her legs between his. But there was something off, the tension in the way she held herself, like a piece of plywood ready to snap in half or a coil about to spring. Jack could feel her heartbeat hammering away against his belly.

“Jack…” She spoke first, then stopped and took in a ragged breath.

“Yeah?”

Her hands bunched around his shirt.

“Nothing,” she said. Then, “I love you.”

It sounded like a question the way she shuddered it. Jack uncurled the hand fisted in his shirt and brought it to his lips.

“I love you, too,” he said, giving the back of her hand one, then two more small kisses before giving it back to her.

She sat up then. Or tried to; from the way she fell back down on her forearms she was probably in too much pain to sit up all the way like she wanted to. Jack hooked his hands under her armpits and held her up and she shot him a grateful smile. 

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said.

“You too,” Jack said, and winced. It sounded cheap when he said it like that, just repeating it back to her like some coming-in-his-pants teenybopper hoping to get lucky. But she had something important she wanted to get out and he didn’t want to cut her off trying to one up her at waxing poetic.

“If anything ever happened to you I’d die.”

There were tears in Ally’s eyes when she said this, but she didn’t look away from him. Normally, when women said stuff like this out of the blue it was because they were trying to get you to get something without them having to come out and say it. With Ally, Jack had always been able to see exactly what it was she wanted him to. He prided himself on that. But this time it was the opposite, there was something there beneath the words she didn’t want him to know. That on its own bothered Jack, but what bothered him worse was that he couldn’t for the life of him guess at what it could be, and he hated it. He’d never not been able to see her before.

“Nothin’s gonna happen to you. Or me,” he said, lowering his arms to lay her back down on top of him. “What is this, huh? What’s goin’ on, baby? Tell me.”

“Nothing,” she said, rushed and hoarse. She sniffled some and Jack began running his fingers through her hair once more. “Just…I worry sometimes, you know. Stupid stuff.”

Jack’s heart sank and mortification filled in the space it left, molten and hateful, and making Jack wish he were dead. He knew alright. He knew all too well.

“I know you do and I know I keep sayin’ it, Ally, but I’m so sorry. For everything. I don’t expect you to believe me when I say I’m done with all that shit. I just gotta prove it to you. And I will, you’ll see.”

Ally’s hands fisted at the back of his shirt again in what would probably have been a hug if Jack weren’t on his back. Then she began to cry, the same hoarse, rattling sobs from before, only muted now, smothered by Jack’s shirt. There wasn’t anything more Jack could think to say or do now except hold her and let her get it out. To think, how strong she’d been for him, for pretty much the whole time they’d known each other, and he’d never realized til that exact moment how fucking helpless she must’ve felt through all of it. With the perspective of a few months’ sobriety, Jack had thought he’d had a pretty good idea of just how fucking useless he’d been to her from the start, but it turned out he really had no idea. Par the fucking course, where he was concerned. 

 

* * *

 

 

Fourteen missed calls from Rez; of which, a whopping nine ended in voicemails that, to quote his most recent, just wanted to know _what in the_ ** _fuck_** Ally thinks she’s playing at—rather _who_ she’s playing _with_ ; where in the bloody _fuck_ did she get off going radio silent on him for nearly a week? _was she insane?_ He didn’t know who the fuck she thought she was but if she knew what was good for her she’d better pull her head out of her ass and be done with the little tizzy she had herself in, because she had less than twenty-four hours to pick up the goddamn fucking phone before Rez had her back to doing covers in tranny clubs right along with that junkie, redneck, man-baby she called herself married to.

Rez, Ally thought darkly as she dropped her phone back into her purse, had better be glad her ‘man-baby’ husband wasn’t one of those creeps who were always checking their partners’ phones.

In actuality, if it weren’t for Jack and the fact that today was Thursday Ally’s phone would still be dead and Rez’ nine voicemails and twenty-seven texts would have continued to go unheard and unseen for a another week, or more, probably. 

But today was Thursday, and it had taken her too long to answer earlier that morning when Jack had had to ask her if she was up to coming with him and too many things had hit Ally too hard and too fast during that too-long silence that had followed. One, that she had no idea what Jack was even talking about. Two, that she _did_ know what Jack was talking about. Three, that up til ten seconds prior to Two, she’d had no sense of what day it was or that another day had even passed and that that was a much bigger problem than it’d seemed ten seconds and however many days prior. Four, the furrows in Jack’s brow and the downturn in his lips adding to the ambience of the playback of his question, that scared/nervous, fake-blasé quiver in his voice that showed up whenever Jack thought he was asking her for something impossible (like, _Can we put up a tree this year for Christmas? And maybe invite Noodles and the kids and your dad for dinner?_ ). Five, every time over the past however many days when she’d rolled over in bed to find him at her side with a plate of pancakes or pasta or takeout from her favorite sushi place, only for Ally to turn her back on him. Six, that today was Thursday, and she’d missed Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday, and every other day since that night, and she hadn’t even noticed til Jack reminded her of Thursdays. Seven, that it was Thursday, and she hadn’t bathed since that shower, and sleeping next to her must be like snuggling up to a dead bodega cat. Eight, that she still hadn’t said anything to Jack’s question. Nine, that Jack had taken her silence for a ‘no,’ and was guiding her back down to the bed by her shoulders. Ten, that he was consoling her, running his fingers through her oily hair and stroking her flaky cheeks, just... _touching_ her, like he could touch her without even knowing where she’d been, because he didn't. Eleven, that he still loved her, so, so much and she still had no idea why, especially now. Twelve, that she still hurt, all over, everywhere, but that she had to get up because it was Thursday and she’d been half-asleep so long she was almost brain-dead. Twelve B., that obviously she hadn’t checked but she was positive her thighs still had marks on them and that walking would still feel like using a paring knife for a tampon, but that she had to get up because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten or showered or peed, and if that fucked her up she could only guess as to how freaked Jack must be.

(Very. He put up a good front at playing it off; it was only because Ally wasn’t FaceTiming Ramon that she could tell Jack was swimming breaststroke today so he’d have a reason to look over and check on her every time he came up for air.)

She’d come with him. She’d gotten out of bed. She hadn’t showered, or taken a bath; it was all she could stand to bird bath it at the sink and run the tap, scalding, hot as it would go, over her hair. She’d put on sweats—Jack’s, because her whole body felt like one big oozing scab. She’d gotten dressed in their closet just in case Jack walked in and saw. She hadn’t looked in the mirror once. She hadn’t brought her phone, Jack had handed it to her in the car; “Forgot this,” he’d said. “Your dad texted me the other day askin’ why you weren’t answering his texts” She’d had two from Dad and five from Ramon. “I told him you weren’t feelin’ good but I think that made him more worried so you should probably…” He’d held the phone out to her again then let it fall into the cupholder when she didn’t take it. “You know, if you’re up to it or whatever.” She hadn’t and she wasn’t, she didn’t trust what she’d tell him, if he asked. Also, holding her phone made her hands shake, she couldn’t get Rez’ voice out of her ears. The texts and voicemails were still on there, she couldn’t delete them for whatever reason, so they were still there which meant she couldn’t hold her phone either. She hadn’t stopped shivering since she’d swabbed that damp washcloth across her arms and pits—too quick, the way you’d rip off a bandaid—too quick to do any good except to bring her back to being on on her knees, hunched and prone, while Rez sprayed her down like a dog.

“Ready?”

Jack wasn’t in the pool anymore, he’d gotten dressed and was standing in front of her with his gym bag slung over his shoulder and her purse in his hand, the other held out to her. She hadn’t noticed. She was losing time. Again.

She started to cry. She tried to stand but she couldn’t walk. She blinked and then Jack was carrying her through the hall and tucking her back into bed and she was still crying so hard she’d started retching. She couldn’t make out what Jack was saying but she heard his voice crack and she remembered how earlier he’d been touching her even though she was all grimy and he couldn’t even tell, and Ally wanted so badly to remember he still loved her even if she couldn’t remember why. That brought her back enough to sit up and push the covers off and grab Jack before he could move away. She could feel he was fucking terrified, and so was she, and she was so fucking sorry for it all. She hadn’t meant for this to happen. She’d thought she’d been so careful. She’d had no idea. She’d never wanted to hurt him. She’d never wanted any of this to hurt him. She’d tried so hard. She’d woken up after that night and Jack had made her favorite pancakes but she had been so worn out she'd just wanted to lay back down and then she’d rolled over and it was Thursday, and she had no fucking clue how that could’ve happened but “ _I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”_ she bawled into his neck, over and over until she ran out of breath and her mouth stopped working and she couldn’t make any sound at all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so, first off, thank you all for your comments! I canNOT tell you enough how much they mean to me. This chapter would've come a lot later if it hadn't been for all your feedback, so please keep it comin'!! 
> 
> Second, sorry for the long wait. This work was complete, but then I decided at the last minute to rework some things and now....whoops, it's back to being a WIP. This chapter was actually going to be a lot longer, but I actually like this last section as an ending piece. I think what I had in mind for the second half of chapter 3 works better as its own chapter. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think in the comments section below :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> H'okay! 
> 
> So, this chapter isn't technically finished, there's a whole lot more I wanted to get to before posting, but I haven't had as much time to write as I did when I first started and I didn't want y'all to think I'd forgotten about this story. Rest assured, I have not and I am DETERMINED to finish it up, ASAP. I've had a lot of crazy things happen in my personal life in the past couple of weeks that has left me with very little time to write or be active in fandom at all, really. But I really, really appreciate all of your comments--they've definitely kept me going. I'd just ask you all to be patient with me as I try to crank out these last few chapters; I'm doing my best to catch up but like I said, I've been going through a lot of upheaval in stress in my personal life that's keeping me from writing fic as much as I'd like. 
> 
> So if updates are a little slow, please don't panic, this story isn't going on hiatus or being orphaned/abandoned. I'm just going at a slower pace than I would like.

 

 

“Hey.”

Rustling blankets and a throat-clearing cough crackled over the other line and into Jack’s ear, closely followed by a booming, overplayed yawn.

“Yeah, Papo,” stretched around a second, softer yawn. “I’m here, wassup?”

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed up a sigh. Fridays were Ramon’s day off and Jack knew from experience how much the guy valued his beauty rest. Normally, he hated to do this to him but Jack been up all night himself trying to decide what to do, who to call, whether he should do anything or if it would be better of him to keep doing what he’s been doing and respect Ally’s right to work through whatever it was that had her all twisted up on her own. Then it was morning and Charlie was antsing around his side of the bed needing to go out and Jack, on instinct, had grabbed his phone off the counter on the way out the door.

“Hey,” he said again. “Uh, sorry to wake you. Know you probably only got off a couple hours ago…”

“Yeah, but I mean it ain’t no thing, man.” Ramon said through another long stretch. “I know it’s gotta be somethin’ if you callin’ me up this early, so what’s good?”

“Ally,” said Jack, figuring it best to just cut right to the chase. “I mean, she’s not good. That’s why I’m callin.’ You talked to her at all? Lately?”

Ramon was up now.

“Define ‘lately,’” he said. “I mean last time we spoke was around last week, or maybe the week before, but she hasn’t answered any of my texts since then. Thought she musta just been busy in the studio, you know?”

Not good. For days now there’d been a gnawing sense of awful chewing a hole in Jack’s gut, and those last few words out of Ramon’s mouth had only sent it burrowing deeper. Jack swallowed thickly.

“That’s the other thing,” he said. “She hasn’t been to the studio in days. Rez actually called me the other day to check in, she’s been ducking him, too. I told him she wasn’t feeling well, ‘cause that’s what I thought it was, like her PMS actin’ up or whatever, but it’s been days…”

“This time of the month does tend to last more than one day, Papo,” Ramon said, half-heartedly sarcastic, like he didn’t buy it either.

“Not what I meant,” Jack grunted. “She said she was in pain a couple days ago, you know, _down_ _there_? So that’s what I thought it was, but she’s barely gotten outta bed since then. I can hardly get her to eat anything, and when she does she just throws it back up. She’s cryin’ all the time, won’t let me more than two feet out of her sight, but she’s hardly sayin’ anything to me. It’s like she’s been in a fog this whole past week. If it was normal for her to be like this when it was, you know, her time, I wouldn’t be callin’ you; but, I mean, you know Ally better than I do and you know this isn’t her.”

He wrung a hand through his hair, dragging it all the way to the base of his neck before letting it drop off and hit his side. On the other end, Ramon huffed, having gone from worried to exasperated just that fast.

“You said she’s been tired and throwin’ up a lot, did you have her take a pee test?”

Jack gripped the phone, wishing Ramon was there so he could smack it in his stupid, smirking face. Weren’t gay dudes supposed to be a girl’s best friend? How was he so fucking clueless?

“Are you fuckin’ crazy?! You can’t just fuckin’ spring that on a chick! Besides, remember I said she’s not talkin’ to me?”

That last thing, at least, seemed to get Ramon acting serious, finally. “What do you mean she’s not talkin’ to you? What’d you do?”

Jack gritted his teeth. To think he’d come here expecting help. This was what he got, probably, for waking the guy up at half past dawn.

“Nothin,’” he said. “I don’t think, anyway. She’s not pissed at me, that much I know. Otherwise she wouldn’t be huggin’ on me so much.”

“Definitely preggo, then. Congratulations, Daddy.” Jack could hear the big fucking smirk in Ramon’s voice and it made him want to fucking deck him all over again.

There was more rustling coming from the other end and another exhausted groan and Jack pictured Ramon flopping back down onto his pillows, ready to send Jack packing and head back to sleep now that he’d apparently solved the case.

“I don’t think that’s it,” he said, before any of that could happen.

It didn’t fit, none of it. Ally wasn’t sold on kids, as far as Jack knew, but falling pregnant wouldn’t have her walking around like a damn ghost, refusing to eat. And if it did, she’d at least tell him that was why. After all, when had she ever not told him exactly what was on her mind? What reason did she have not to, if that’s what this was about? It’s not like he’d force her to keep it if she didn’t want a kid right now. He was sure he’d never given her any reason to be afraid of him trying to pull something like that. He’d never given her any reason to be afraid to tell him anything, ever.

Or had he?

Jack thought back to that fit she’d had the previous afternoon, when she’d been too shook up to even walk and he’d had to carry her from the gym to the truck and from the truck into the house and into bed. What she’d said to him then; cried to him, more like: Apologies.

_I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_

It didn’t fit. What reason could she have to be apologizing to _him_ for being pregnant? To be apologizing for anything, really? The only thing that came to mind was—

Not even a remote possibility.

Ally had had all that time in the beginning, those nights they were on tour and he’d blacked out between shows. Then after, when he was doing his own thing and she’d been back here with Rez working on her album. After the Grammy’s and all the shit he’d pulled that night, she’d have had every reason to get back at him for that if she’d wanted, but she hadn’t left his side. Not once. That wasn’t who Ally was, she was too damn loyal and selfless and noble and so fucking good, too good for him because Jack knows if it had been the other way around, if it had been any other woman but Ally, Christ…

But that was beside the point because Ally was Ally, and she’d have left his ass plain and simple before she’d ever step out on him.

So that left nothing, then. And if Ramon’s thinking was horseshit—and it was—and Jack had nothing to counter it they were both ass out, then. There was nothing to do but see Ally through it, whatever it was. Only Jack had the feeling he’d still need reinforcements.

“Look, will you at least come sit with her for a while? Maybe you bein’ there’ll get it out of her.” Before Ramon could reply, Jack rushed over him. “I know what you think is up with her, but I don’t think that’s it. I just don’t, at least not all of it, and if you saw her you’d be with me on this. I’ve tried to get her to talk to me, man, I have, really. It’s just--I think maybe she, or maybe I’m not the right—If I’ve got it wrong and it is what you say, then she ain’t ready to tell me and that’s fine. I get she’s scared, I just wanna know she’s okay and I think maybe she needs a friend right now more than she does a husband.”

Silence on the other end. Swear to fuck if that guy went back to sleep after Jack spilled his fucking guts all over him…

“So c’mon, man, it’s your day off, right?”

Ramon sucked his teeth and groaned sarcastically. “It is, and I’m fuckin’ sick to death of you white people commandeering it with this tired ass _Young and the Restless_ shit.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Later today, ‘round noon? I’ll make that chili dip you two like so much.”

Ramon sighed again, lighter this time, like he was covering a laugh with it. “Alright, Papo, damn, you don’t gotta twist my arm. I’ll be over there later after I catch some more z’s.”

“Thank you.”

The other end went quiet and Jack had to check his phone to make sure Ramon hadn’t actually hung up on him or if the call had gotten dropped as he and Charlie wandered into a particularly wooded area. But then he heard the other man’s voice come through, plain and sobered for the first time since he’d picked up the phone.

“Really, though, you don’t gotta do all that, Jack. I’m glad Ally’s got you doin’ right by her. You know she’s been through some frogs, boy. Even with all your shit, none of the guys she’s ever been with went as hard for her as you do. You always got her back, you know?”

Jack didn’t know what to make of that. He never did whenever Ally brought it up herself. If he was the fucking gold standard out of all the guys she’d ever been with then, as a man, that was just fuckin’ embarrassing.

“You shouldn’t be thankin’ me for that,” he said. “For loving her like she deserves.”

“I’m not,” said Ramon. “I’m just remindin’ you of what I told you when you and she first started goin’ out; you better keep treatin’ my baby like the queen she is ‘cause I know for a damn fact Lorenzo was into some _Goodfellas_ shit back in the day and I’m not afraid to tell on you.” 

Jack laughed, his head bobbing in a nod invisible to the man on the other line.

“So twelve, then?”

Laughing with him, Ramon said, “You gotta put the chips in the oven like you did the last time, and they better still be hot when I get there, Papo. Extra guac, too, you know the drill.”

“On it,” Jack replied, with barely enough time to get the words in before he was talking to a dial tone. With one last dry chuckle, he whistled Charlie over to him and began herding the both of them out of the woods and back in the direction of home.

 

* * *

 

 

 

One of the worst things Ally ever did was after Atlantic City, when she’d moved out of The Boyfriend’s place and back into her childhood bedroom and immediately tried to sell her old piano on eBay. It’d been a real dick move on her part for a lot of reasons, but mainly because that piano wasn’t even fully hers’ to begin with. It was a family heirloom, of sorts. Her father had given it to her mother on their first wedding anniversary before Ally was even born, and even though Ally had been the only one to ever actually play it, it would have only been considerate of her to ask her dad if it was okay with him if she sold one of the last things he had of his wife on the internet for chump change. It wasn’t, in any case. Even though her mom had been MIA for years by then her dad had rained down Hell on her when the new owners had shown up to take the piano he still considered to be her mothers.’ He’d ended up handing over two weeks’ of tips to those Tisch dropouts to get it back into the basement and refused to speak to Ally for almost a month.

Ally never came clean to her dad about why she’d done what she did, though it took forever for him to give up on asking, and the piano sat in the basement for a year and then some. Even after her dad forgave her and offered to move it back into her room Ally refused to go near it. This, too, didn’t escape her father’s notice, but with nothing to go on but her silence he just chalked it up to her putting the final nail in the coffin of her dream of being a professional singer. To be fair, he wasn’t wrong. That man who’d found her in the subway station and whisked her off to A.C. had taken more than just the obvious from her. It was another lifetime before Ally found her voice again, before she could bring herself to start another songbook. And it wasn’t until she met Jack that the thought of singing her own songs didn’t send her back to the red room in Atlantic City. That’s the kind of magic Jack had; to be able to go in and pull her out of that place without even needing to be told where she was.

Earlier today, while Jack was out, she’d woken to two more texts from Rez. The first was a picture of her on a bed in the dress she’d worn the other night, passed out, her arms raised above her head and tied at the wrists. Below the picture was a message that simply read: _The studio is waiting_.

The threat was as implicit as it was vague. It’d had the same paralyzing, fugue-inducing effect as that cold shower she’d been forced into the other night. Ally had “woken up” at her piano, playing the bridge to her favorite of the most recent batch of songs she and Jack had been working on, when the false memory of playing it for Rez and Paul and whomever else at the studio had hit her. Playing her songs, their songs, her and Jack’s songs, _her_ songs for Rez, for Paul, for Subway Station Man, in Atlantic City, in the studio, with all of them hovering over her, held down, her wrists tied, her skirt hiked up, her tits exposed, _The studio is waiting_.

If she sold this piano on eBay, Jack would probably shrug and buy another one. Probably without even asking why, he was good like that. But the studio would still be waiting. And if Ally couldn’t remember that picture there were probably others Paul had. That Rez probably had. Fuck.

Ally slapped her hand down on the keyboard, striking herself with the sour chord that filled the air. A pair of hands settled on her shoulders, she jumped. They squeezed and shifted up and down along her arms, easing the sudden tension away.

“Got a visitor,” Jack said softly. When did he even get back?

Ally’s gaze shifted in the direction Jack was sort of turning her in to find Ramon leaned up against the doorjamb, arms crossed, and all frowned up in gay disapproval.

He scoffed. “Girl, when’s the last time you touched water? You look like you just gave birth to the Thing from the Black Lagoon.”

Ally went back to her piano. “Fuck off.”

She felt Jack’s hands squeeze her one last time. He pecked her on the cheek once, twice, before backing away.

“I’ll leave you two alone.”

Ally pouted. “Where’re you going?” He knew she hadn’t meant him.

“Movies,” Jack said over his shoulder, already making his way down the hall. “Be back in a couple hours. The rest of the chili’s on the counter.”

Ally sniffed the air, tasting for the first time the heavy, trademark spice that covered the whole house whenever Jack made his secret crockpot chili dip she and Ramon were always begging him for. Letting her know he hadn’t just gotten back, she was losing time still.

“You’re shameless,” she rolled her eyes at Ramon.

He smirked as he came further into the room, a serving dish piled with chips in one hand and a white plastic bag held in the other. Both of which Ally missed initially. Ramon dropped the bag on the floor by his feet as he plopped down beside her. He pulled the piano cover down and set the chips on top, knowing without knowing that Ally wouldn’t be getting anything done today anyhow.

“They’re nice ’n warm, too,” he said, continuing to talk as he stuffed another in his mouth. “I told him when he called this morning to have ‘em ready by the time I got here, and…”

He pointed a chili-slathered chip in his hand at the dish in front of them, piled with chips just hot enough to eat, waiting for her to dig in. Ally took one from the top, more chili than chip, and then three more, puffing her cheeks out like a hibernating squirrel and hopefully saving her from having to talk for at least thirty more chews. Not that that was going to stop Ramon.

“So the boy calls me at fuck-you-o’clock this morning,” he began, still crunching. “Whinin’ in my ear like a Jewish mother and begs me to come over and babysit you for a bit.”

God, there was nothing like a true blue, ride-or-die BFF to lift a girl up. Ally rolled her eyes.

“I try to set his mind at ease over the phone, tell him there’s a simple explanation for what’s got you all whacked out—” Ally shoved another pile of chili in her mouth. “—but you know your boy,” Ramon shrugged.

“Cut a long story short, let’s just hurry up and do this thing so I can get back to my day off.”

Ally only had enough time to get out the first half of“What the fuck— _“ are you talking about?_ before Ramon was showing her the e.p.t.

“You need a glass of water first?”

He smirked, and Ally imagined smashing the hypothetical glass into his face, like Leo in _The Departed_.

But then…How many kids did Paul say he had? _Did_ he say? Or had he just been on about his mothers-in-law? Ally’s stomach knotted the further down that rabbit hole she went, and the chili and chips she’d only just gotten down shot right back up her gut and onto her lap.

“ _Shit!”_ Ramon shot up, and before Ally could react his hands were hooked under her arms and she was doing all she could on jellied legs to help him help her slide out from the piano bench. Faintly, because Ally could feel her ears clogging and her body—not her body, but her _body_ —drifting, Ramon sounded nervous, leading her down the hallway.

“Okay,” his voice quivered. “Okay, Ally, baby, look at me, huh? Look.”

She was sat on the lid of the toilet seat in the bathroom. Rez—No, Ramon—kneeling in front of her, wiping at her mouth with a wet paper towel.

“Shit,” Rez said. “Shit. Okay.”

Ally tried to jerk her face away but his grip was too strong.

“Okay. Alright. Okay, okay.” He pulled her close, his hands stroking her back. “Okay, I didn’t mean to freak you out. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you like that, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. That was shitty of me.”

Ramon pulled back. He held her face in his hands again, smoothing the hair out of her eyes.

“Alright? That was my bad,” he said, his voice coming out garbled and far away like Ally was hearing him from underwater. She could see, though, his eyes, red and wide, and jumping in that way they did when he was in over it. The hands holding her head jittered like a pulse.

“Alright, alright,” he heaved between two deep breaths. “Just breathe with me, Ally-girl.”

Ally choked down a breath and just as soon blew it out, wet and rushed. “ _I can’t be pregnant, Rez!_ ” 

Neither of them heard it at first, too busy trying to catch their breath. Ally breathed in again, Ramon breathed out. In, then out. In, then out. Then,

“Ramon.”

Probably if she hadn’t bothered correcting herself they could have let it slide, but it was out there now, too late for take-backs. At hearing his name, Ramon slid back into a sitting position on the edge of the bathtub. With barely a glance in his direction Ally could feel the steadiness from before coming back to him, the feeling you get when all the edges of the jigsaw puzzle are done and all that’s left is the middle.

“Jack said on the phone you’ve been throwin’ up a lot,” he began carefully.

Ally shrugged; she hadn’t been expecting him to go that route.

“I guess.” She couldn’t know for sure. Every day since that night had been a blur.

“Did you eat at all today before we had those chips? He said he can barely get you to, most days…”

That was a good question. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, hugging herself. “It’s all a blur.”

Ramon was quiet for a bit. Then the tap was on and the shower was running and he was coming toward her—

“C’mon, at least take a shower. You got throw-up all over you.”

—Pulling her up by her arms. She pulled away. Tried to. Too strong. _No!_ —

“No! It’s cold. It’s too cold! It hurts, I can’t take it!”

—She shoved at him, hard, hard as she could but he had her by the wrists—

“Ally, what the—? Chill, alright? Just chill. You don’t have to shower if you don’t w—”

—He had her too tight. She couldn’t break away. She twisted her wrist so hard she heard the joints snap and the pain was so intense her head went light and he let her fall to her knees—

“Ally? _Ally_? Ally, you still with me? Hey—!”

—Cold. Cold. The water was so cold, she tried to crawl away but he had her. She shoved and shoved but he had her arms locked between her and his chest. She can’t—

“Shhh, Ally-girl. It’s alright, I got you.”

—I _t’s just us now_ —

— _No!_ —

“No! No, no, no, no, no…”

“Shhh…”

\--No, please—

“Rez, it hurts. It hurts. It’s cold. Turn it off.”

— _Turn it off, please!_ —

“ _Please just take me home. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!_ ”

— _One of Paul’s girls now.—_

_—Perfect, like a fucking virgin. Take it, sweetheart, take it. Jack into this kinky shit, too?—_

_“Please, don’t tell him.”_

_“_ Ally, it’s okay. It’s alright. _”_

 _—The studio’s waiting_ —

“Haven’t said anything, Please don’t tell Jack, please, please…”

— _Pull your pants down and show him_ —

“ _Please_ —”

“I won’t. I won’t say anything. You know I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

The room had gone sideways and now her head was in Ramon’s lap and he was again smoothing the hair back from her face. She’d cried a great, big wet spot into the leg of his jeans.

“How ‘bout a hot bath, at least?” he said, just above a whisper. “You gotta change your clothes, baby girl.”

He stroked her back, patient while Ally came back to herself.

“I wanna do it.”

Neither of them knew what she meant. Shifting beneath her as though to stand up, Ramon said, “I’ll wait by the piano.”

Ally shook her head. “Stay.”

The shower was still running. In a daze, Ally pulled herself up from Ramon’s lap and went over to shut it off. Moving to the tub, she turned the cold tap on just past a trickle, then the hot as far as it would go and took a seat on the edge, her position facing the wall adjacent the one Ramon sat propped against. Head and shoulders hunched, Ally slipped her pajama bottoms off and onto the floor, noting that all the marks were still there, rusted red, gray-blue, purple-black; exactly where they’d been before, only seemingly fresher, bolder than they were that night, as though to mock her for not having bothered to bathe until now. She didn’t need to check and see if Ramon had seen, the tension emanating from that section of the room was telling enough. Before she lost her nerve, she swung her legs over the edge of the tub and lowered herself into the steaming water. It stung. It scalded. She hissed through gritted teeth as she pulled her top over her head and tossed it to the floor.

“You want me to grab you some clothes?” Ramon asked. He still hadn’t moved.

Ally stretched back, letting her head drop back against the headrest as she contemplated her reddening skin and whether the water was hot enough to boil it all off. She sank further into the water and sloshed an arm out the side, reaching for him.

“Just stay.”

For the first time since undressing, her eyes flicked over to find Ramon knelt at her side. Through misted eyes, Ally watched as he folded her wet, scalded hand in both of his and pressed them to his chest.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **insert battered, rain-soaked cardboard "WILL UPDATE FOR COMMENTS** sign. 
> 
> Please comment? Reading you guys' thoughts on each chapter really is what I look forward to most :)


	5. Chapter 5

Bobby chose to forego the standard greeting.

“The hell happened to _‘Call first?_ ’”

Jack took in his brother for a whole split second—the familiar _School says any more tardies this year and you’re gonna hafta repeat_ scowl lining up extra wrinkles around his jaw and between his eyes—and made his decision. The old man was still too slow as Jack ducked beneath Bobby’s arm and across the threshold between the porch and the foyer.

“Little fuckin’ shit…” Bobby spun around and gripped at the air between them, one second behind, as always. Jack smirked back at him, giving him the old Eddie Hascal face, as Bobby used to call it. 

But self-satisfaction quickly reverted back to nervousness as Jack noticed Bobby’s frown lines deepen. He gripped the package under his arm for support. Coming here out of the blue had been a gamble on his part, he was breaking one of Carl’s main rules, after all. Rules that had been doing a world of good for him and Bobby so far. But Ally and Ramon needed time to themselves and today wasn’t a gym day and Jack’s only other friend lived in Tennessee; and when faced with a choice between wallowing in the sad truth that his only two friends in the world were his wife and a guy who lived two thousand miles away, and going out on a limb with the hope that his big brother would take pity on him one last time, Jack had chosen the option less likely to have him giving in to the bottle. And to further tip the odds in his favor, had made sure not to show empty-handed.

“That only applies to me,” he sassed back. Before Bobby could retort, Jack took the white box out from under his arm and held it out like a peace offering. “Ever play golf on one of these?”

Bobby frowned deeper, his eyes narrowed with suspicion at the newly purchased Wii.

“How in the hell’re you supposed to play golf with a joystick?”

Jack had to laugh, unable to care what it did to the tension. “You really never seen the commercials?”

“What’re you doin’ here, Jack?”

Jack winced. Pulling back and settling the Wii box back under his arm, he rocked back on his heels and fixed his eyes on a corner section of Bobby’s hardwood floor, where the light reflecting through the glass panes of the front door had cast a rainbow shadow in that section of the foyer. Bobby refused to let up, and the increasingly unbearable silence droned on between them until Jack finally gave in.

“Ally’s havin’ her friend over this afternoon, thought I’d give ‘em their space,” he said, not looking up.

“And you didn’t have nowhere else to go but here?” Bobby added, knowing full well they both knew the answer to that.

Jack shrugged, the bitter pill of humiliation he’d swallowed a few hours when he’d made up his mind about coming over here now burning a hole in his gut. He refused to let himself wallow in it. This was what he got, his penance for all the shit he’d piled on Bobby over all these years. In group, Carl said it was important they hold themselves accountable for whatever it was they did while in the throes of addiction, but that it was alsoimportant to be sure accountability didn’t become self-recrimination. Meaning they couldn’t spend every second of every day raking themselves across the coals for the shit they pulled before they got sober because that was the quickest way off the path to recovery. Jack got that, in theory; in practice, though, that sweet spot between guilt and acceptance was a hard mark to hit. Especially when Jack couldn’t walk two steps without being smacked in the face by some reminder of how every person who’d ever cared about him had gotten fucked twice as hard by his own demons right along with him. It would’ve been easier if Bobby had just slammed the door in his face and told him to beat it.

“Noodles’s all the way out in Memphis.”

Before he could look up or take his first step toward the front door, Jack felt a hand clap his shoulder and his legs start to move in the other direction, Bobby leading him toward the den. Momentarily startled, Jack’s head shot up and his eyes met his brother’s wry expression.

“Callin’ first is a courtesy, boy,” he said. “Suppose I had a lady friend waitin’ for me upstairs?”

Jack grinned, the hole in his gut filling with the familiarity of rapport and routine.

“Well, if you did it right she should be conked out a while yet.”

Jack was rubbing his stinging ear before he even registered the swat. His brother still had the fastest hands of anyone.

“Little fuckin’ shit.”

Bobby squeezed his shoulder and Jack ducked his head again, full on beaming now but with enough pride left in him to not let his big brother see.

 

* * *

                                                                                                    

Her wedding night was one memory hasn’t had to call up in forever. Not because it had been some monumental disaster she’s had to work to repress ever since; no, the opposite, actually. Ally wasn’t the type to measure things like this, but her and Jack’s wedding night—which they’d spent not at some fancy six-star resort like you’d expect of two Grammy-winning musicians, but in the guest room of the pastor who’d married them—was Ally’s most pristine memory in the whole of her and Jack’s relationship. The gold standard, if you would. Things had been rocky between them before, and they’d gotten even rockier after; and even though Ally’s love for her husband never wavered through all that, there had been times through her and Jack’s roughest patches when she wasn’t sure if the same was true for him. For those times, she had that the memory of that night.

The thing about Jack and about her and Jack was that a lot of the time Ally felt like she only got to see a piece of him at a time. That was the performer in him, she guessed; and this was what it cost to love him; and oh, Ally did. The performer, the musician, the mentor, the lover, the drunk, the partner, every piece, and every part, and every space in between, Ally loved each in its own equal and desperate way. And then there was the man, shoved into the cracks between all the rest. For so long he had been hardest to love because he almost never let himself be seen. That had changed completely since Jack had come home.

Ally knew now that Jack was his most honest self when they were alone together, but for so long she’d agonized. During those first few months on the road right after they first met; those nine absolute shit weeks she still had to tour while he’d been in rehab; whenever he’d blacked out or they had to be apart and all Ally could do was _wonder_ and _remember_.

The half-baked abashment he’d proposed to her with; the tears in his eyes the first time he saw her in her dress; the gratitude in his arms as he crushed her to him and kissed her breathless after she’d performed their wedding song. That was real. They were real. And the things they said to one another that night they’d spent in the spare room the ladies of the congregation had gone to so much trouble to transform into a one-night honeymoon suite, candlelit windows, rose-strewn bed and all; that had been real too. In all the pain and disappointment and doubt that came in the months that followed the night of their wedding, Ally always had the memory of what came just before to buffer against the fear that “the husband” would be the first role of Jack’s to get sick of her and then all the rest would follow along like dominoes.

Alone at night, in a strange bed in a foreign hotel, she just had to close her eyes and take herself back to another, less unfamiliar bed, and she’d hear his voice, feel him pressed against her back, his chin resting on her head, his bulk wrapped over and around her like a furnace. This was love, voluntarily sweating her ass off in the Tennessee humidity because even just the thought of not touching him made Ally want to die.

By the time everything was said and done they’d been dead on their feet; too tired to move much less make love but also too keyed up to sleep. They were _new_ and giddy. And for some reason, they couldn’t stop giggling. Notable, because Jack had remained completely sober once his hangover wore off. That had been Jack’s wedding git to her; a promise he couldn’t start to keep until months later. Ally hadn’t cared one way or the other at the time because there had been that spark in Jack’s eyes. Even now, Ally didn’t have a name to call it. “Wholeness,” was what he had when he was performing; “Livened,” was when they were performing together. There was probably a word for what a lost key feels when it finally finds its lock, something beyond rightness. Or maybe that was just Ally projecting.

Indelible in her memory, though, is the feeling of this fingertips drumming down along her abdomen all the way until they reached her navel, and then continuing to tap out their own sort of jumbled morse code. And how she’d squirmed back into his front, pushing him away but onward.

“One thing at a time,” she’d reminded him, only deadly serious.

His fingers quit, and his enormous hands lay flat against her lower belly. “I know,’ he said, absent of any playfulness or wheedling. Not for the first time did Ally thank God for a man who took her seriously. “I was just thinkin.’”

“What about?”

“Who taught you to ride a bike?”

The question threw Ally completely off, she had to laugh. Short, and only once when it became clear Jack wasn’t being coy.

“My dad, I think.” Maybe. He’d been busy a lot when she’d been that little. She’d probably just figured it out by herself one day.

“I never learned,” Jack said, in that regretful matter-of-fact way he had about describing his childhood. “I mean no one ever taught me. I just figured it out watchin’ the other kids do it. I don’t think it ever even occurred to me to ask.”

Ally didn’t know what to say. She never did when it came to stuff like that.

“I’m gonna make sure and teach our kids. When we get there.”

Ally turned around in his arms then, sliding her leg between his so to still keep things light. “You really want all that?” _With me,_ she stopped herself from adding.

“I want everything.” He answered right away, no hesitation but also no pressure. _With you,_ Ally had to imagine him saying, but not that hard. She wished then that she’d asked.

He went on without her. “I know we got a long way to go before—”

“No, it’s not—I mean, you’re right, we do. I just—” Ally cut herself off, not knowing at all what she actually meant. She tried next to find her footing with a joke. “I mean, I’m no spring chicken. A baby might rob you of my girlish figure.”

A flash of anger struck Jack’s face. Then, just as quickly, it was gone. The hardness in his face melted away and he was tender when he reached up to cup the side of her face.

“Listen.” He paused then took his hand back and with his index finger, traced the familiar silhouette of her nose, from the tip all the way up, then back down. “No part of you could ever be ruined.”

That had been another promise among the dozens he’d made to her and she to him that night. Ally couldn’t speak for Jack, but only a few of them continued to matter as time went on, and only that one mattered to her now. It hadn’t technically been a promise, but Ally knew he’d meant it like one. But then, Jack was a man, and while she knew the man better now than at any other point in their lives, she’d known men before; boyfriends, husbands, bosses, managers, musicians, mentors, and drunks, and it wasn’t that they could all be painted with the same brush, only that they were all full of shit and so were their promises.

Ally loved Jack; all of the parts, all of the roles, all of the pieces, cracked, broken, drunk, sober, welded together like a stained glass kaleidoscope. But it was the man—warm, and tethered, and sure, and radiating _rightness_ , for probably the first time in his life—Ally couldn’t bare to lose. He had to be the exception because Ally didn’t know what she’d do if he wasn’t.

 _No part of you could ever be ruined_. He’d said that. He’d meant it. But that was then, and as much as Ally loved him, as good as she knew him to be, Ally couldn’t see Jack teaching another man’s baby to ride a bike. Couldn’t feel him drumming his fingers against her pregnant belly with that same excitement. He’d never touch her the same way again. _I want everything_ had never included this.

“You want me to look? Ally? Hey—” Ramon nudged her shoulder. In one hand he held his phone, the stopwatch app now down to 00:00, in the other was the pregnancy test she’d thrown away on reflex right after peeing on it. Thankfully, the sign inside the little window was too tiny for Ally to read from the angle at which she was sitting. Ramon didn’t wait for her to answer him.

“Negative,” he said, then, like an old BandAid, tossed the test right back into the trashcan beside her. He crouched down and put his forehead to Ally’s, and his arm came up to hold her in a loose hug.

“Breathe.” His voice hitched like he wanted to laugh. Ally tried to follow suit, she was so fucking sick of the waterworks, especially now that she knew for sure she wasn’t knocked up. Not that that had even been on her mind. And why the fuck hadn’t it?

“I didn’t even think to check,” she mumbled. But she and Ramon were too close for him not to hear it. He didn’t need her to elaborate.

“That doesn’t matter. You were just tryin’ to get through it. Don’t beat yourself up.”

“You think I should’ve gone to the hospital?”

“I think you did what you had to.”

“I should’ve gone.”

“Maybe.”

“It hurts.” Ally’s breath caught, her eyes burned, and dammit there they were. God bless, Ramon, he still didn’t need her to go into it.

“Still?”

She nodded.

“You should go, then.” He tried to say it gently but just like earlier with the test, Ramon had this way about ripping the BandAid off things. He couldn’t help himself.

“It’s too late, though, right? It’s been more than a week.”

“If you’re hurtin’ down there, Ally, you gotta go see someone.”

Ally sniffed audibly and dragged the back of her hand across her nose. Ramon let her out of the hug enough to reach around her to grab a bunch of toilet paper off the roll to hand it to her.

“You wan me to go with you?”

Ally shrugged. “What if he did something to me, like messed something up. Down there. Permanently?”

There, that was another secret she’d been trying to keep from herself. Another possibility she’d been trying to hide from by playing Ophelia the last week or so. Even worse than the thought of that other thing was the idea that Paul could take just one more thing from her. And now she couldn’t stop shaking.

“Only one way to know.”

Ally ignored him, but her mouth was still working on its own. “It started coming back to me almost as soon as I got home. When I first woke up I couldn’t remember anything, but then I had all these…flashes…I think that’s why I slept so much. My house doesn’t look anything like his but all I have to do is take a step and I get this _shooting_ pain between my legs and I can see him on top of me, almost like I’m back there watching it happen to someone else. Only I feel it, all the time…”

“Shhhh…”

Ramon pulled her down so that they were both sitting side by side against the wall of the bathroom and she was sobbing into his neck. It was like she’d described before, her watching this happen to someone else as though this were all a dream all while knowing full well that this was her and it was all real. Ally couldn’t even tell when she’d started crying.

“He keeps texting me.”

“Who?” Ramon went dark. “The guy, that exec?”

Ally shook her head. “Rez. I was supposed to come into the studio the day after but I never got out of bed. I’ve kept my phone on silent the whole time but he won’t let up. He’s started leaving voicemails…”

“Ally,” Ramon squeezed her shoulder, not tightly, but enough to get her to look at him. “You gotta at least tell Jack about that part, even if you don’t mention the other thing—”

She scoffed, harsher than Rez deserved probably but he could take it. “How am I supposed to tell him about my manager blowing up my phone without explaining why? He’s bound to ask.”

“He’s bound to find out,” Ramon countered. “Truth always comes out, baby. Jack’s a lot of things but dumb ain’t one, and now you don’t even have the benefit of him being too fucked up half the time to give a damn about anything.”

Ally’s whole body felt hot with the burn of mortification both past and present. She started to tremble, Ramon hugged her tighter.

“I’m not gonna say anything. You decide, no matter what, you know I got your back. It’s all up to you.” There was a ‘but’ hanging on at the end of his declaration. Ally finished it for him.

“The truth always finds a way.”

Ramon patted her shoulder.

“I have to go back into the studio tomorrow. I can’t keep putting it off.”

Ramon’s hand stilled. “If nothing else, that might shut Rez up.”

“Or make him think he’s won.”

“Or that.”

“I’m under contract, regardless. There’s no getting around it.”

It took a while for Ramon to respond, almost like he was weighing his choice of words. Ally held her breath.

“I don’t want you to go alone,” he said finally. “Not saying you’re not strong enough. Lord knows you handle yourself just fine. I’m just sayin’—”

“—I don’t wanna go alone, either.” Ally said, rushed out on the end of the breath she’d been holding. “I can’t even bear to text Rez. The thought of being alone with him. I—all those songs I demo’d for him. The new ones. They’re ones Jack and I wrote together, and I have to give them to them—”

Her voice cracked. Correction, she’d already given them to the label, to Rez. Take them back and record some new tracks for the album or let them stay on, it didn’t matter, they won either way. Ally couldn’t breathe.

“Shhh…” Both of Ramon’s arms were around her now. “Shh, no one said you had to go in tomorrow. You and Jack could get on a plane to Dubai tonight and say you’re on a second honeymoon, what are they gonna do? Sue you?”

“They could.” Could they? Mentally, Ally tried to recall the terms of the contract she’d signed when she’d first been brought on by Rez. Three albums, but did it say anything about how long. There had to be something in there. There was. Ally had read that thing over so many times, she wouldn’t sign it for three weeks, she’d wanted to be so sure it was the right move. That nothing like what had happened before she met Jack would ever happen again. She’d been well versed in the ins and outs of her contract up to when she signed and after. But this is what it’d been like lately, even now that she was up and moving. Everything was so muddy, the thoughts, the memories, the things she wanted to say were all just out of her reach. Ally had come out of the quicksand but she’d had to leave so much behind to get there that there didn’t seem to have been a point since she couldn’t get anywhere without them.

Ramon was saying something Ally couldn’t make sense of. She cut him off.

“I’m gonna take Jack in with me, when I go in to the studio.”

Ramon paused but didn’t seem all that pressed about being taken off track whatever he had been saying.

“But how’re you gonna get him to do that without havin’ to explain?”

Ally’s head hurt. “He used to come in with me all the time at first. It’ll be like old times. It’ll be fine.”

“Alright.”

Ally needed to get to her phone. She nudged Ramon. “Help me up?”

He stood and pulled her to her feet. He tried to guide her out of the room but she shook him off.

“I’m gonna lay down,” she said, heading on numb legs in the direction of the bedroom. “You can stay and finish off the rest of that chili dip if you want.”

Ramon followed her to the bedroom but stopped in the doorway. “Nah, I’m gonna head out. Enjoy the rest of my day off, know what I’m sayin’?”

That’s right. Today had been his day off. Ally felt bad. “Did you have plans?”

“Don’t worry about that.” Ramon turned serious as he pulled her in for a long hug. “Take care of yourself, mama. Answer my damn texts. And let me know how it goes tomorrow.”

Ally hugged him back. “I will.”

Pulling away, Ramon looked her dead in the eyes. “Call me if you need anything, alright? Don’t hesitate.”

“I won’t.”

He held steady. “I mean it, girl.”

Ally smiled, her heart feeling full for the first time in too long. “I know. Love you, too.”

They pulled each other in for another quick squeeze, and Ally watched as Ramon made his way to the door. When she heard the door slide closed behind him she went over to the outlet on the opposite side of the room, where her phone was still plugged in and sitting on the floor. It was on and still fully charged. There were seven new texts from Rez. Ally opened the messaging app, and doing her best not to read any of the ones labeled new, typed out a hasty reply before turning off her phone for the night.

_I’ll be in tomorrow. Jack is coming w/ me._

 

* * *

 

Ramon was gone and Ally asleep in their room by the time Jack got back later that evening. He was more disappointed than surprised, but that was probably just him being selfish and expecting too much too soon. Leaving out today, Jack had had visions of coming back and seeing Ally and Ramon spread out on the couch, by then on their third bag of tortilla chips, too into their own world to even notice he’d just walked in the room; like old times. Well, _If wishes were horses_ , as Bobby and their dad used to say. Jack knew he should have known better, one afternoon wouldn’t be enough to fix everything. That had been stupid of him to even think.

In group, Carl said when the same old feelings that made them want to drink start up what they should do was direct all that energy into something productive. Maggie, his therapist, agreed. With them in mind, Jack let Charlie out and started on dinner. He knew Ally’s new routine well enough by now to know she’d be out for a while yet, and for once Jack was glad for this since it gave him time to vent. It may not be cold enough for it yet, but Jack was in the mood for something hearty and warm, and time consuming.

Italian was the one type of cuisine he still didn’t feel all that comfortable making for her. You don’t just make a born and bread Italian girl rigatoni, or veal picatta, or even something as simple as spaghetti without her looking over your shoulder to make sure you make it the exact same way her grandma taught her to do it when she was seven. But Ally would be dead to the world for at least another three hours and Jack was in the mood to eat his weight in cheese so lasagna and garlic bread it would be. If he missed a step Ally’s gran could come back from the grave and sue him.

He’d just taken everything out of the oven and was pulling together a salad when he heard something—or someone—knocking at the sliding glass door leading out to the patio.

To be honest, Jack had been wondering when Rez was going to make a house call, given Ally’s radio silence over the last week or so. He hadn’t wanted to pry, given how upset she was, but it’d had him worried that she hadn’t been called to the studio for a couple days. Now, taking in the twitch in Rez’ bloodshot eyes and the gleam of sweat covering his face, Jack knew he had more cause to be anxious on his wife’s behalf. The guy looked like he’d run here, despite the fact Jack could very clearly see his Porsche parked down in the driveway.

“Hey,” he said by way of greeting, sliding the door open and stepping to let the other man in. Rez, for all he tried to tamper whatever scorpion had crawled up his ass, barely let Jack get the door open good before he came scampering in past him.

“Hey, mate,” he said in a weird voice. Spider senses tingling, Jack followed Rez into the sitting room and then into the kitchen, watching as Rez’ head swiveled this way and that, as though trying to see in every direction at once until finally, he asked, “Ally home?”

He was headed past the kitchen now, toward the bedrooms. Jack caught him by the shoulder and swung him around. This seemed to catch the guy’s attention.

“She’s asleep,” he said shortly. “I just got done with dinner. I was about to wake her up. I can tell her you came by and she’ll call you later.”

“Lot of good that’ll do,” Rez, said too loud for it to be under his breath.

“Come again?”

That, for some reason, seemed to shock Rez back into himself. He seemed to steady himself a bit, and, appearing apologetic, motioned for them to head back in the direction of the sitting area.

“Can I get you somethin’?” Jack asked. “Water. Some coffee…”

“Thanks, mate, but no. I’ve been mainlining the stuff for the past couple days.”

Jack nodded. Sure, if that’s what he wanted to call it. He took a seat on the sofa adjacent the one Rez had chosen.

“So,” Rez began. The twitch in his eye had let up some, but now he was doing that foot-jingle thing Jack hated when other people did. Figures. “You notice anything off about Ally lately?”

Jack stiffened. Hell if he was gonna give this schmuck the satisfaction. “She’s been down a little,” he said. “But I guess all that is to be expected. Anyway, that’s her business. Not sure you got any place coming into her home to discuss her like she’s not a grown woman.”

Rez held up his hands in surrender. “Not trying to overstep. It’s only that she’s not been taking my calls lately nor has she been at the studio as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Whatever you did to piss her off is between the two of you.”

Jack knew then he must’ve hit the nail on the head somewhere by the way Rez’ eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see. So this is all on me, then?”

He put up a good front at faking being affronted, Jack had to give him that, but he didn’t like the direction this was going in.

“She’s mostly kept you in the dark about all this, then,” Rez went on. “Figures.”

“The hell do you mean by that?”

For all his faults, Jack wouldn’t exactly say he had a hair-trigger temper. That was more Ally, if he were being honest. Still, there were some things that were just over the fucking line, too much for a man to be expected to take in his own home. He was on his feet before the words were even out of his mouth. Rez, meanwhile, hadn’t moved an inch, plastic, _fuck you_ smirk all plastered along his face like he knew more than Jack. And fuck him, he did, didn’t he?

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

The smirk slipped from Rez’ face and Jack’s fist uncurled as they both turned to see Ally standing on the edge of the room.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your support and patience. I'm so sorry for the delay in updates, but they should be coming much faster now. We're in the home stretch now, folks!
> 
> A side note, I confess, another the reason these updates have taken so long (in addition to my ups in downs in my living sitch) is that I've been working on some of my original fiction as well. So, if any of you are interested in that (and I SO hope you are), there'll be more on that later!


	6. Chapter 6

 

Caught in the crosshairs of the bitter confrontation happening between Ally and her manager, the one thought that kept running through Jack’s head was that this was what people meant when they talked about the grass never being greener from the other side. Not ten minutes ago he’d been begging for anything, _anything_ , to put some life back into his wife. It was there now, for sure, but not in the way Jack liked to see.

He’d seen this look on people before, Bobby, other musicians he’d collaborated with, and of course, on many a girlfriend or groupie he’d had over the years; but never, not ever, had Jack seen it on Ally, and if ever there was proof that that woman loved him more than he deserved, that fact alone was it. When you’re a lifelong addict, there’s a certain kind of Look you get accustomed to seeing on the people around you as one by one they get sick of your shit and leave you to it. It was a combination of fury, betrayal, heartbreak, and disbelief all circling the drain around the emptiness your hurt has left them with, and made you reel far back enough to keep you from your vices long enough to take a good, long look at yourself; if there was anything left of you to see, that was. Ally had that look now, and Rez was still standing.

“You’re up,” Jack said needlessly, the first to break the thirty seconds of tension that had begun to overtake the room once Ally made her entrance. She ignored him and continued to focus in on Rez. She hadn’t moved, her arms remained folded protectively over her but a tremor was starting to show in what had begun as ice cold defiance. Rez took a step closer, Jack side-stepped him before he could take another. To Ally, he shot his thumb over his shoulder in Rez’ direction.

“He was just stopping by t—”

“Check in on you,” the other man finished unnecessarily. He moved around Jack to make his way toward Ally, who once again backed away. He caught up to her, overly suave, and grasped her by the arms on either side. “You’ve been MIA these last couple days, love. I was gettin’ worried.”

Ally’s face went livid-panicked-slack. She paled. Jack pulled up behind Rez and tugged him back.

“She’s fine,” he said. “If she wasn’t answerin’ you there was probably a reason. Take a fuckin’ number, and get out.”

Rez shoved him off but otherwise paid Jack no mind. “So you need a mouthpiece now,” he sneered, his voice taking on a heated, almost anxious lilt to match his earlier twitchiness.

“Fuck you,” Ally said in a low voice, bent inward, the space around her cheeks and neck good and red now.

“It speaks!” Rez laughed. Jack caught him ‘round the neck before he could say another word. Acting unfazed, Rez shook him off again. “Fine, fine, I can take a hint. Now that I know you’re alive, Ally, I’ll be on my way. Come back to work whenever you’re ready, but don’t be too long. I played Paul that demo you recorded a few weeks ago and he’s keen to hear the rest, we don’t want to keep him waiting do we?”

Jack gripped him up again, the smug bastard. He was done. On any given day the doublespeak would be enough to send Jack through the roof but he’d be damned if anyone would insult Ally to her face in her own damn kitchen. He had Rez now by the collar of his shirt and the hair at the nape of his neck but just as he was about to frog march the guy out to his car the other man slipped down through his fingers and onto the floor, as several things registered in Jack’s mind at the same time: a low wail that became a scream and then a sob, something invisible flying past Jack’s face, and the sound of glass shattering on the floor right next to him.

“You crazy bitch!” Rez was on the floor, his hands clasped over his nose and right cheek, he glared up at Ally mutinously.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what’d happened. Shifting gears into damage control, Jack’s eyes flitted first to Ally, crouched over by the countertop where now only one empty drinking glass was set out, hands gripping at the undersides, far from fine. The best thing Jack could do for her then and there was get this limp dick sack of shit off their floor. Doing a quick once-over to make sure the fucker wasn’t actually bleeding, Jack hauled him up by the nape of his neck and did just that. There were all manner of cuss words and threats of careers being over but Jack couldn’t be bothered to hear. He all but physically threw his wife’s manager out of their home and onto the back steps that led to their driveway, with a parting warning to not even think about contacting Ally until she reached out to him first. Watching to til he saw the tail-lights of Rez’ car disappear down the road, Jack slid the back door closed and headed back into the kitchen. Ally hadn’t moved.

“Dinner’s ready,” he started, not sure where they even went from what just happened, or even how to process it himself. Was the Ally he saw back then his Ally, the normal Ally; or was all that just a stress reaction to seeing the person she’d been avoiding for the past week? Why, then, if it was the latter? What the fuck did fucking Rez have to do with what had had Ally so upset all this time?

“‘m not hungry,” Ally mumbled. She didn’t look up at him. Back to how it had been before, then. Only Jack wasn’t going to do it, not after all that had just gone down a few minutes ago.

“Enough,” he said in a strangled voice. He worried from the way Ally’s head shot up that it might’ve been too harsh, but quickly did away with the thought. It was due. “Ally, enough. I’ve been tryin’ to be supportive. I’ve been giving you your space, tryin’ to wait for you to be ready to tell me what has you all—” Jack fumbled for the right word while Ally watched on, uncharacteristically mute and staid. Deciding then to change course, Jack charged on. “Look, you have to know by now that there’s nothin’ you could ever do, ever tell me you did, that’d make me—You’ve never been afraid to talk to me, and that’s the one thing I never want to change. We always gotta be able to talk to each other, right?”

Ally barely moved a muscle. Then, finally, she dipped her head ‘yes.’ She pressed her lips too firmly together, her face looked ready to crumple. 

“So c’mon,” Jack said. He came over to her then and pulled her into a loose embrace, tucking her head under his chin and smoothing a hand down the surface of her hair. “Whatever it is. You don’t have to hide from me.”

There was a weird sort of squeaking sound that came from Ally than, muffled by his shirt. She went stiff. Then, gradually, to Jack’s dismay, she pulled away from him and stepped back a couple paces. Jack sent her a questioning look and spread his arms in invitation. Ally shook her head just so, forlorn, like rather than what all he’d told her just then, he’d told her he wanted a divorce. Confused, he made to move toward her before she stopped him with a shake of her head and reached for the waistband of her sweatpants. Bemusement barely had time to become dread before there was nothing, nothing at all left in Jack as he watched his wife lay herself bare to him.

She had been ruined, all over, and all this time and Jack had been too fucking caught up to put two-and-fucking-two together. _Fuck_. Bile swilled up in Jack’s mouth, he caught it in enough time to swallow it back down but even so he couldn’t bare to look away from the sight. Splotches of purple and red were faded now, and if Jack didn’t know, instinctively, what he was looking for, he would’ve missed the shape they made of the handprints—his handprints—where he must of gripped her, held her down while she screamed, _Oh God, Oh God, Oh God_ —

“—wanted to go back to his house after drinks—”

Ally was talking too fast, Jack couldn’t make sense of her. It was like he’d gone underwater and she was standing on the edge of the pool trying to call him back up, _Free swim’s over, next class’s about to start_.

“—wine, and then the next thing I knew I was in his bed, and I—”

He had to get out of here. He was gonna hurl if he had to look at this for even one more second and guess at what the rest of her looked like, he couldn’t be here.

“—please, Jack, say something. Jack?—”

One, two, three, four fingermarks on the left thigh, five on the right. He counted. And then he was in his truck.

 

 

* * *

 

Here’s a secret about him Ally especially didn’t even know: All those times in the beginning and toward the middle, before rehab and all that led up to it, when Jack knew Ally had him rightly pegged as a whiskey-soaked halfwit and had him—rightly—skating on thin fucking ice for his habits; when, whenever she referenced it, he used to tell her he hadn’t even thought about drinking—because for the first time in probably his whole adult life he was feening for something that wasn’t booze or music or the crowds or sex, just her, and life—for the first time, ever—because of her. That wasn’t the secret, she knew that already. He’d told her that on more than one drunken occasion. The real secret was that he’d been telling the truth all those times, each and every one. It was a corny fucking thing for a grown ass man to say, but Ally was life, _brought_ life to him from the moment Jack saw her rendition of La Vie En Rose that first night. His therapist and Carl told him it wasn’t right of him to make his wife the object of his sobriety and they were right but they had it wrong. Ally wasn’t his reason for not drinking, she was the drink: the rightness, the thrill, the weightlessness, the elation that came with the bottle was all of what Jack got from just being near her, plus more. If anything ever made him want to still drink with her in his life it was the fact that even with all her love he was still himself—but he was better about that now, post-rehab.

Ally’s never believed him whenever he’d try to explain it to her, though; not in the beginning when they were still getting to know each other, not when she’d come to see him in rehab that time and made like he wouldn’t want to stay together now that he was clean, not before, and definitely not now that he’d done what he did.

Driving to the liquor store just off Coventry—his old haunt, where every cashier on every shift knew his shopping list by heart—had been reflex, and Jack hated himself for it. He’d left her. Left, up and left, without saying a word. And came here. Even if he turned back now the damage was done. He hadn’t left the car since he’d parked but she’d still know, wouldn’t she? Did it matter? Sober or not it was all still a betrayal. It was all a betrayal.

Rez knew, that was the first thing to click once Jack realized where he was driving to. That fucker knew, and he’d come to their home, to what? Jack couldn’t remember anything of the conversation they’d had between the two of them before Ally walked in. He’d dismissed it all as coked up horseshit and it had all gone away the second Jack had seen Ally’s reaction to him being there. Had that fuck been stalling? Had he thought that if he just bided his time Jack would’ve gotten up at some point and left them to it with Ally in the state she was? And what if Jack hadn’t been there to begin with? All those calls he mentioned, what had he been telling her all this time?

For the millionth time that night, Jack swore and slammed his fist against the rim of his steering wheel. The more pieces came together the more questions they left him with, and what to do about them? Ask, as if he had the right when all this time he’d been sitting blind on the sidelines thinking he was doing right. Then he finally nuts up and gets the truth and the first thing he does is turn tail and head out for a drink.

A voice in his head that sounded too much like Carl reminded him then that he hadn’t gotten out to get that drink yet, that he had yet to even turn off his lights. And to that, Jack said, so-fucking-what.

Ramon had to know, right? He hadn’t before, Jack was sure because the guy wasn’t the type to lie, not about something like that at least. If he’d had some idea he would’ve pointed Jack in the right direction instead of playing dumb. But then why the fuck did he leave her, then?

As though Jack had any reason to talk.

He turned his lights off.

He couldn’t go home, not now; but he couldn’t go in there, either. The person who would’ve continued fucking this whole mess six ways to Sunday would’ve been passed out in the bed of the truck by now; that shitfuck was dead now, and Jack would be damned if he was going to bring him back in the middle of all this. He had to try and work this out somehow.

Thanking fucking God that he’d still had his phone on him when he left, Jack reached in his back pocket and, not feeling brave enough yet to try Ally’s phone, let alone head back, headed to his recent calls list and hit a familiar number.

The other line barely got one ring in before it picked up.

“She told you?”

Jack didn’t know what he’d expected, to be honest, but he’d be lying if he said getting this serious side of Ramon right out the gate didn’t have him further on edge now. It had been selfish of him, to call Ally’s best friend in the world in the hopes that the other man would joke him through all this like he had earlier that day. That was unforgivable. If noticeable lack of snark and hoarseness in Ramon’s voice confirmed anything for Jack it was the realness of it all. At least, if he were to go by the difference in Ramon’s demeanor between then and twelve hours ago, Jack could safely say he wasn’t the only one who had been in the dark. Not that that helped.

“I was with her nonstop for over a week,” Jack’s voice cracked. He could barely get the last words out.

Ramon cut him off before he could go on. “Stop. It’s not about you.”

“You’re right,” Jack swallowed thickly, a whole new wave of shame washing over him. Fuck him if that wasn’t what he’d been doing this whole time. “Fuck…”

“Where are you now?” Ramon demanded. How the fuck could he know Jack wasn’t home. When he answered he was too ashamed to lie.

“Liquor store.”

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.” He meant it. Fuck, if that wasn’t the designated bouncer in him coming out for the first time for Jack to witness. A burst of fury hit him then, as the thought blew past; where the fuck was this when Ally was—Why hadn’t he gone with her? Why hadn’t Jack? Why the fuck had she gone alone?

“Fuck you,” he said hotly. “I didn’t go in.”

“You still ain’t where you need to be,” Ramon hit back. He was right. Jack had nothing.

“She showed me,” he said, vision blurring, his throat clogging with new tears and recent memory. “She showed me and it-it was like I just blanked. Next thing, I was in my truck in the parking lot here. But I haven’t gone in, you gotta believe me. Believe me?”

He didn’t mean to sound so desperate, but on top of everything, the admission of where he was, what he’d almost done—on pure reflex, it was selfish but if it got back to Ally it would kill Jack he knew it would.

Ramon sighed. “None of it matters but yeah, I can hear it in your voice, Papo.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you gonna do?”

They both knew the obvious answer, Jack was getting to it. But he had to talk about this with someone and he couldn’t with Ally yet. There was too much. He’d failed her too much, on too many things, and he already fucked this up once. Before he went home he had to know how to do this right.

“She hasn’t gone to the hospital, has she?” That was rhetorical. He’d been with her the whole time. The whole fucking time when she’d been in too much pain to even fucking walk; _how the fuck had he not seen?_

“No. She’s not pregnant, though. We—I mean, she—took a test when I came over, ‘cause remember I thought she was…”

Ramon’s voice cracked across the line as he trailed off and Jack imagined the other man’s eyes blurring as his were. Again, the sour taste of bile burnt its way up his throat. Throat too tight to send it back down Jack was only just quick enough to prop the door open and get it all out onto the pavement. For several long seconds he forgot about his phone and Ramon as his mind had to burn away all the distinct possibilities. _Not_ he kept reminding himself was what Ramon had said. _Not pregnant. Not._ Fuck.

“You still there?”

“Yeah.”

He heard Ramon sniffle. “I’m sorry, man. About earlier. I shoulda taken it all more seriously.”

“You didn’t know. Besides, it’s not about you, remember?”

“You shoulda seen the way she looked at me when I pulled out that test. She threw up on herself. I should’ve known then.”

“You couldn’t have.” Jack surprised himself with how even he sounded. He felt anything but.

“Neither could you.”

Jack let out a long breath. “That helps.” He took in another. “She’s been in so much pain this whole time, she should go, shouldn’t she? To the hospital.”

“She’s scared.” Jack knew that, he did, but hearing it made him want to be sick all over again. “She promised me she’d go, though. I offered to go with her but she said she didn’t want that.”

“Should I…?”

“Ask her.” Like it were that easy.

“I don’t think I can. I can’t talk to her about any of this.”

“Fuck you, you can’t!” The bouncer was back and if he were in the truck with him right now Jack had a feeling his head would’ve been through the windshield. He was right. Jack switched on the ignition.

“I’m heading back. We’ll probably be at the hospital tonight.”

The sound of the car turning on must’ve carried through the speakers, Ramon’s voice held more relief than it had during the whole conversation.

“Keep me posted,” he said.

“You got it.”

 

 

* * *

 

He found Ally in the first place he checked, their room, curled up on his side of the bed. The whole way home he’d run scenarios of what would be waiting for him when he got here: a fight, an empty closet and a note on the counter, or a much worse scene, one they’d never be able to come back from. This much less outcome had been the preferred but not one Jack had planned for. He didn’t know what to do. Unsure how to approach her, he hovered in the doorway for a while before deciding to knock. She sat up right away.

“Can I come in?” he asked, with a grand total of nothing better to start with in lieu of that. Ally shrugged.

Jack noticed she was wearing the same clothes from earlier, old sweats that had never been big on her. Only now, positioned as she was in the middle of that huge bed with her head turned away and her shoulders hunched did she look to be drowning in them. Though she’d never been what you might call “statuesque,” what Ally lacked in height she more than made up for with her presence alone. So much so that Jack forgot sometimes, how small she could seem.

She flinched away from him as soon as he made to sit down by her, then just as quickly tried to hide it as though it hadn’t been on purpose. Jack took the hint anyway and backed up towards the foot of the bed to give her her space.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so fucking sorry about how I acted, Ally. That was so…I just—I blanked. And I don’t want to make excuses but I feel I should be honest with you and say I…I’m out of my depth here. I don’t know the right thing to do but I’m gonna learn, and God, _I’m just so fucking sorry._ ”

Fucking terrible, is what that was. The opposite of how he wanted it to go. Jack’s throat burned and he swiped at his eyes before he could continue.

“I know…I know you talked about this with Ramon earlier but I really think you should go to the hospital. I mean I don’t wanna make you. I’m not. I just…think it might be…you know, a good idea.”

“I told him I would go.” It was the first thing she’d said and it shook Jack to the core to hear the nervousness in her voice, all high and delicate, like she was talking down a cornered animal. It hit Jack then like a ton of bricks, that she was as scared shitless by all this as he was, in the same way. Like all she had to do was make one misstep and it would all come crumbling down on her.

“Hey.” Giving way to reflex again he breaks his own rule and slowly, leaving her time to back away if she needed to sets a hand on Ally’s shoulder. “None of this is on you, you know that, right?”

Her eyes, red rimmed and already starting to swell, went glassy.

“Hey,” Jack said again, pulling her into his arms to hold her tight as she began to sob. “Hey…It isn’t. You were trying to explain before, when I left, weren’t you? I’m sorry I walked out on you. I fucked up. If you wanna tell me what happened go ahead, I’m all ears. But you don’t owe me an explanation, alright? You don’t know me anything.”

“ _I’m sorry!_ ” Ally bawled. “ _God, Jack I’m so fucking sorry! I fucked everything up!_ ”

“Hey, now, shhh,” Jack hushed as he continued to rock them back and forth. “Don’t you fuckin’ apologize. Not to me, not to anyone. You didn’t fuck anything up, what’re you talkin’ about?”

“I was so _fucking_ stupid!”

“You weren’t. You could never be.”

"Please," she cried, the strain in her voice making her words harder to piece together.

"Please," Jack was just barely able to make out. " _Please...Please...Please, don't.._." 

"'Don't what'?" he asked, pulling back shaking her just a bit, desperate to get through. "Am I hurting you? Ally you gotta tell me what to do. Tell me how to make it better!" 

Ally wouldn't answer, couldn't answer, as her sobbing grew harder, her whole body beginning to convulse with an agony, a despair that somehow seemed to Jack to run much deeper than a just over a week's worth. Helpless, Jack could only ache with her, as she was left gasping and choking for air as she clung to Jack and he to her, the both of them seeming to beg the other for some manner of absolution, some clear path forward.

“I really, really think we need to go to the hospital, baby,” he said again, once she’d calmed some. “It’s the last time I’ll ask but I really think we need to go, tonight. Can we? Will you let me take you?”

Feeling her head bob _yes_ just once against his shoulder, Jack gathered up an all but limp Ally and made his way back out to the garage where the truck's engine was still hot.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch now, guys!! Thanks to all of you who said you'd be interested in reading my original work, it means the world!! As do your comments, can't wait to read them!!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unedited and it's 4:30am. Sorry for any mistakes, y'all!

The main upside to living in New York as a celebrity was, as it was with any other Regular Joe on the street, almost nobody gave a single shit about you. Rich, poor, black, white, cab driver, cop, busker, banker, or hooker, New Yorkers were the same in that they were all about the grind. Ally had always both loved and respected the hell out of her hometown because of this. That respect increased tenfold after she’d gone from nothing to rising pop star to Grammy-winner seemingly overnight and found that she could still catch the 6 Av Express at Tremont to get back home from her Dad’s and to everyone else in the car with her be nothing but another faceless hustler trying to get from Point A from Point B, just like when she was waiting tables. Even in her and Jack’s rural-by-comparison section of Long Island where people who were wealthy enough didn’t have neighbors on purpose, the two of them were simply faceless faces in a much-sparser crowd. That was how it was here, regardless of borough, everyday New Yorkers had too much tunnel-vision for anyone else to be anything other than a speck in their peripheral. Born and bred in the Bronx, it hadn’t taken Ally long to have just one more reason to appreciate Jack being local, even if he didn’t like coming into the city much. When it seemed like everyone in the world knew you, it was crucial to your sanity to have just one place where no one gave a damn.

Hospitals were different, though. They had to be, given their intended purpose but even so, Ally hated the inversion. On the streets of New York everybody was a nobody and nobody mattered, not even if you were sitting directly under a subway poster with your face on it; but in a New York hospital, every name on a chart was a priority and that priority went up triplefold for you if neither you nor your husband had to identify yourselves to the receptionist on call before being admitted.

One of the things about fame Ally still has yet to get used to about fame is how when you hit a certain level, people just know to do stuff for you before you could even think to ask for them. It was an adjustment this loudmouthed Italian girl from the Bronx didn’t think she’d ever get used to, practically being discouraged to speak for herself.

Case and point, the room the orderly was wheeling her into was a private room. Not a big one—this was a small hospital, their section of Long Island didn’t need one the size of New York Presby, after all—but still, that neither Ally nor Jack even had to ask…Speaking of which.

“Do you know where my husband is?” Ally asked the nurse, Kayleigh, according to her name tag, as she helped Ally out of the wheelchair and into the bed in the middle of the room.

A look of panic darted across Kayleigh’s face at the question, like she almost wasn’t sure she should answer. And this was the other thing Ally hated about this place where it was people’s job to know you and when they _knew_ you—or thought they did, knew you and your husband and the real drama between you that’d gone down in public plus the fake shit those squirrely cunts at TMZ and Buzzfeed made up for retweets and clicks; they thought they Knew. And so now, when your perfect, perfect husband who you love more than your life, more than music, carries you into the ER in the middle of the night and you’re both a mess, and he’s too mortified to give them an answer when they ask why you’ve come in tonight; so they guess and they get it in one and as soon as they put you up in those stirrups in that exam room and you lock eyes with your husband and break down again, so far down you can’t even bear to let him touch you and when the doctors and nurses ask you if you’d like him to remain in the room your head starts shaking no before you realize what you’ve done. The doctors and nurses and orderlies knew you and they knew him and they knew the half-true whirlwind Hollywood romance fans and the media kept telling themselves and the roles they’ve cast you and your husband in; and so now when he brings you to the ER with what you heard the doctor who examined you call a “brutalized” cervix and fading bite marks and marking all down your boobs and thighs the staff here think they know the turn your story’s taken.

It was in the Kayleigh gave Ally as she tucked the blankets around her and prepared to answer. The other woman knew, so now she thought she knew and Ally didn’t know which was more powerful, the urge to break down and let the shame of it all take her or to scream the whole truth at the other woman, damn it all if right after, she ran and sold the story to People, just as long as she knew what she thought she knew was bullshit.

“He’s talking with the police right now, I think,” Kayleigh finally answered. She patted Ally’s hand and gave her a reassuring camp counselor smile. “They’ll probably want to speak to you, too but you should know you don’t have to speak with them if you don’t want.”

“I don’t,” Ally said too quickly. Kayleigh tried and failed to keep the pity off her face. She was too good at her job to adopt the patented New Yorker indifference, in Ally’s opinion. It made her kind of hate her a little bit for it. Doubly so, when the other woman tried to squeeze her hand and she could feel herself about to lose it all over again.

“Please just get me Jack.” Her voice cracked and she snatched her hand back to her chest and buried her face in just as tears began to cloud her vision. Nurse Kayleigh left without another word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From a legal standpoint, it probably would’ve been smarter to cooperate when the police showed up, but Bobby had always been the brains of the operation and if it was one thing Jack’s big brother had always drilled into him it was that if you wind up on the wrong side of the law you don’t say shit without your lawyer there. Bobby had their lawyer’s number, but even if he hadn’t, Jack probably still wouldn’t have said anything to the cops, who’d gone off to get Ally’s side of things after Jack had told them there wasn’t any trouble between her and him.

It was the principle of the thing. This had happened to Ally, not him, and maybe he was being weird about it—although how in the fuck should he know how to be about any of this?—but it didn’t feel right to be the one to tell anyone else about what’d happened. It seemed to Jack it should be Ally’s to tell.

But just in case, because the two guys from the SVU didn’t leave happy, Jack pulled out his phone. The door to the conference room the doctors had led them to had no locks and he had no idea if this was a hot meeting spot. Better make this quick.

“Twice in one day,” Bobby’s voice was extra gruff, as though he’d been sleeping. Lord help him if Jack found out he was all early-to-bed now that they weren’t on the road anymore. “Whaddyou want, boy?”

“Need the number for Gary,” said Jack. He held the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he fished around in the holder in the middle of the conference table for a working pen.

“Stone?” Bobby guessed. “What the fuck did you do.

Just that fast he went from tired and gruff to tired and rote. The worst kind. On the other side of the city, Jack slumped.

“Nothin.’ I’m in the hospital. Not for anything—” He wrung a hand through his already mussed hair and tried to ground himself. It didn’t work. “I mean—I’m not in the hospital, Ally is.”

He could feel Bobby bristle through the phone. He tensed.

“What hospital are you two at?”

“St. Francis.”

“I’m putting my shoes on now.”

“Bobby, you don’t gotta come all the way down here, I just need the—”

A click, and the call had ended and for a moment all Jack could do was sit there and stare at his phone in one hand and the scrap of paper Det. Horsham had written his number on with instructions to get in touch when he felt like talking before they circled back around to him. Jack crumpled the note up in his hand. This was all a fucking mess.

He’d barely been able to think straight since he’d walked out of the house this evening. It wasn’t a feeling Jack was used to and he hated it. Drunk off his ass or stumbling toward sobriety he was the kind of man who always knew where he was going, even if he’d only decided it in that instance. There was a plan, a place he was supposed to be. Rehearsals, on tour, meeting fans, recording, writing music, being with Ally, getting her on stage, getting sober, coming home to her, building a life, living it out with the only person who made it worth a damn; the path was never straight and he sometimes, almost never knew where all the right turns and gaps were, but the destination was always clear in his mind. Not so much now.

It wasn’t just the question of where he and Ally went from here, it was how they’d get there, it was what There would look like, whether it would look the same to both of them. More importantly, where have they been, where the fuck had he been—what relationship, what marriage—that his own damn wife felt like she had to keep something this bad all to herself? It was damn near impossible to self-reflect when all your memories were whiskey-tinged. And that was his answer, wasn’t it? What the fuck could a washed up drunk do with this besides crawl back into the bottle?

Jack pushed back from the table, grabbed the trash bin underneath, and for the second time that night sicked up the rest of the tacos he and Bobby had had for lunch.

She’d been protecting him. Through all this, after having the worst thing in the world done to her, she’d kept it all bottled up, secret, to protect her worthless liquor-soaked husband. Jack was less than the slop he’d just puked up. There was no way he could face Ally now.

There was a soft knock on the door and Jack had to hurry and grab a Kleenex from the box on the table to wipe his mouth just as the door opened and the doctor who’d examined Ally and who’d probably called the police after the nurses had had to drag him from the room appeared in the doorway. Dr. Pardo, her name tag read.

“Mr. Maine,” she said. “There’s someone else here to see your wife. Visiting hours are almost up so unfortunately, he won’t be able to visit her tonight but do you want to speak to him?”

Immediately, a rolodex conjured itself in Jack’s mind as he ran through who the fuck it could possibly be. Bobby couldn’t have gotten here that fast. Ally didn’t have her phone, she couldn’t have called Ramon or her dad; no fucking way would she have ever called her dad.

“Who is it?” he said numbly.

Dr. Pardo’s look was skeptical. “He says he’s her…manager?”

Rez, that fucking limey little weasel shitfuck took that as his introduction. He slither-strode in past the opening Dr. Pardo had left in the doorway and shot Jack a plastic grin.

“We’re much acquainted, doctor, thank you,” he said over his shoulder, not-so-subtly trying to wave the doctor off. “If Ally’s resting, I’d rather not bother her. I’m sure you both would agree.”

He looked between the two of them expectantly. Dr. Pardo, unimpressed, sent the silent question Jack’s way. He responded with a shrug, which she took for what it was worth. Hand on the doorknob, she bid them both farewell as she made her way back out into the hall.

“Take as long as you need, gentlemen. Mr. Maine, have the nurses page me when you’re done if you have any questions for me.”

“Thank you, Dr. Pardo,” Jack said, biting back as much rage at Rez’ showing his face here as he could, so the doctor would know he meant it.

She received his thanks with a professional grade smile and said, “You’re welcome, Mr. Maine. Have a good night.”

The door had only just clicked shut behind her before Jack was on his feet.

“How the fuck are you here?”

He’d meant why. Or both, actually, but the why was more important.

“A fan in the waiting room tweeted a photo of you bridal carrying Ally into the ER and it went viral. I came down here to do damage control. You had a whole mob of paparazzi down in the lobby before I threw them something to chew on and got them to scatter. You’re welcome, by the way. The hospital might still bill you for the extra security they’ve had to call in.”

“What did you tell them?” Jack demanded, undistracted by the bait.

Rez put his hands up as though to bat him down, like Jack was some savage animal on the verge of abandoning all his training for the kill.

“Only that we’d had a little scare and that we’d make a statement once Ally was released and back home tomorrow.”

Jack clenched his teeth. “How the fuck are you so sure it’ll be that quick.”

Rez rolled his eyes. “It’s been over a bloody week, she should be fine by now.”

Jack blinked and then he had Rez by the neck, both his thumbs bearing down on a particularly thick vein Jack was sure had to be the man’s voice box. If only he had long nails like Ally’s club friends, he’d tear it out.

“Careful there,” he gurgled through Jack’s grip. And fuck if that snake wasn’t still showing him that plastic fucking grin. “You know the police are still out here in the lobby. They were finishing up with the lady doctor when I up, asked me if I had any info once I told them who I was. If I knew anything about you two’s relationship, given your ‘substance abuse’ history…”

Like flipping a switch, Jack’s hands unclenched. Rez pitched forward and heaved several long gulps.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, straightening up. “I told them that for all your faults I’ve never once seen you get violent with Ally. You worship her.”

It sounded slimy when he described them like that, pedestrian. But Rez had said it all with an angle so Jack at least knew it was the truth. But again, the question was “why.” Jack bristled.

“What do you want, you son of a bitch.”

Rez patted the air again with taming hands. “I already have it.”

“And that is?”

“The label has her down for two more albums. She’s saved, mate. Unclench your teeth.”

Jacks arms were folded across his chest, he kept playing for himself the image of the narrow-eyed glint in that one detective’s eye when he’d handed Jack that slip of paper and told him they’d be in touch; the only thing keeping him from hauling off and snapping this piece of shit’s neck then and there.

“Is that all you have to say,” he gritted out. “Do you even hear yourself?”

And just like that, the mannequin smile Jack hated with all his being slipped from the other man’s face. In it’s place the cold, condescending neutrality Rez Gavron had never been able to fully conceal.

“You know, at the end of it all, sober or no, you really are just a Walmart Johnny Cash. I can’t for the life of me see why Ally keeps trying to wreck her own career over you. The heart wants what it wants, I guess, but that’s _her_ choice not mine and I’ll be damned if I let this CW Sid and Nancy shit you two have going on take me down with you.”

You get numb to assholes and cunts in their line of work. It was either that or you wouldn’t make it. Rez’ brand wasn’t anything beyond the standard but fuck if it didn’t strike Jack dumb. Maybe it was because it was personal now that the one caught on the wrong end of the shitstorm their industry was infamous for was Ally— _Ally_ —that Jack couldn’t wrap his head around the banality of it all. A two-faced manager was more common than a cheating spouse but Ally had trusted this man. She’d put herself in his hands. She’d won her first Grammy with him at her side. She’d considered him a friend.

“She trusted you.”

“Was she wrong too?” Rez cocked his head rhetorically. “Without me, she’d have faded away as soon as you’d drunk your career away and had no stage left to drag her onto. I got her to the Grammys and a sold-out worldwide tour, which she then promptly threw away to babysit you for the summer. I know she was naive enough to think the label would forgive that mess without any issue but you and I’ve been in the biz too long not to know how that would’ve played out. Could you have lived with yourself knowing that after finally reaching the top your wife gave it all up to play nursemaid to a drunk?”

Jack rocked back on his heels, equally unimpressed. “Yeah, I’m a drunk, fine, but I’m not a fucking imbecile. I know how to assign blame where it’s due, and I’ve been through enough contracts and labels to know every career has ups and downs, especially when the success comes quick. She would’ve bounced back. It would’ve taken some work but rather than go through all that you cut a deal to save yourself the work.”

Rez shrugged, pitifully undaunted. “You’ve been around long enough to get the male side of things down, mate but girls are a whole different breed. They can’t screw up and get back on track without sucking a little cock behind the scenes. Ally got off easy, when she woke up she barely remembered anything.”

It took a lot to get Jack pissed but when he did he burned hot until he either threw a punch or had a drink. He’d been working on that with his therapist and with the group. He’s gotten better. The old Jack would have been since cracked this fuckhole’s head over the polished oak conference table like a bottle of Henesey. The Jack from five minutes ago was ready to do the same. This Jack standing here now, listening to the man his wife had called a friend talk so casually about what he’d done to her, what he’d allowed to be done to her; This Jack, thinking about all the women whose careers he’d been put in charge of—some of them half Ally’s age, Rez’ resume read like an invite to the Vanity Fair after party, after all--it left Jack empty. Cold, apoplectic, and empty, the music industry left people as husks if they weren’t careful, but more often than not people came like that to begin with: Stick figures dressed in all black, the holes in their shells packed with collagen and bluster to fool you just long enough for them to use you all up, and before you could make sense of how you could be so easily fucked with and tossed aside they were on to the next.

Hate was too good for someone like that. What Jack felt went beyond an urge to tear him limb from limb. There’d be no point, besides. Jack imagined choking the life out of Rez, as he’d wanted to do before, would’ve had the same satisfaction as ripping a paper doll into little pieces.

“You really have lost your mind if you think Ally’s gonna wanna work with you after what you put her through.”

“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Rez said, getting frustrated. “The ink on the contract’s already dry. She’s theirs’ until the next two albums are done.”

“Contracts can be gotten around.”

Rez laughed. “Oh, what, you’re going to have her pull a Prince and change her name into and ampersand or something?”

“Just get out,” Jack gestured lazily toward the door. There was nothing in him now willing to waste another speck of energy on this sick joke of a human being. To his credit, Rez headed for the door without so much as a wink. Before he could get too far, though, Jack stopped him.

“Cops are still out there, right? I’ll be speaking to them after this is over.”

Rez sneered at him, poorly masking the panic in his eyes with a bluff. “Surely you aren’t stupid enough to try and bring all this out. Even with all that’s been going on in the news lately there’s still an order to these things. Grammy or not she’s only just started you know how this’ll go.”

Jack did. If that was what Ally wanted to do he’d be behind her a thousand percent but he wasn’t some clueless dessert hillbilly despite what Rez thought, he knew what the industry and the system would do to her.

“Not what I meant.” Inwardly, he laughed at visible sag in Rez’ shoulders. “I don’t have to tell them anything about what you did to show them the texts and the voicemails you left. Expect a restraining order.”

Rez balked. “No one else’ll work with her when I get through. She’ll be damaged goods.”

“Label’ll have to get someone, there’s a contract on the line, after all.”

“Not anyone good.”

“Not your problem anymore. Lose my wife’s number.”

There was nothing left to say—really, there never is with assholes like this—but there must’ve been enough warning in Jack’s tone to send Rez back out into the hall with much less bravado than he’d come in with. Jack supposed he could count that as a win even as the resolution to all that had left him even more directionless than he’d been before.

What were they going to do?

Who was going to work with Ally now? Would she be pissed that he’d effectively fired her manager for her?

Who else at the label knew what Rez had done? There had to be at least one other person. Of all the talking Rez had done of course he’d been smart enough to keep the name a secret.

With a furious, clenched scream Jack turned on his heel and kicked over the chair he’d been sitting in. This, this is what it’d taken to make him see red. _He still didn’t have a name_. He probably never would. It didn’t matter and it did. There was nothing he could do either way. But with a name he’d no doubt have a face. Someone else besides Rez to direct all of this toward, even if there was nothing he could do with any of it but stew.

Jack was so wrapped up in all his sudden fury he didn’t hear the door open again until it slammed closed hard enough to rattle the knob and there was a hand around his throat, bodily throwing him back against the closed blinds of the conference room window. Oh.

“I’m only gonna ask you one more time, boy,” a red-faced Bobby growled.

Quite frankly, Jack had forgotten all about him with all that had happened since they’d hung up. He felt like an idiot then, as he thought back to their conversation. He’d been so focused on getting the lawyer’s number he hadn’t realized how it must’ve looked. This was rich; that Jack had been more than aware of his past when facing the doctors, the cops, and Ally’s former manager, but with his own big brother, who Jack had always wanted to be like, who he’d always been the most conscious of himself around, Jack had forgotten what he was. If asked, he’d say it wasn’t totally his fault given everything plus the fact that he’d just started to get Bobby back. It took everything in Jack to face his brother.

“Bobby…”

He didn’t know how to finish that. For all he’d done, all the shit he’d pulled over the years, Bobby at least had to know Jack would never, could never put hands on someone he loved. He couldn’t have fallen that low.

Bobby held him up like that for a few seconds more, studying him. Then, finding something at least close to the truth, he released him.

“What happened,” he said again, in that same gruff, demanding tone, unsympathetically watching Jack rub at his neck.

Jack ducked his head and looked away. This truth was still not his to tell, not even when his brother was here suspecting the worst and ready to beat him to death for it. It wasn’t his to tell and even if he felt right enough about it to tell the cops if he had to look the man who raised him in the eye and tell him what he’d let happen to his wife the shame alone would strike Jack dead, he just knew it.

“Lotta rumors circling around out there, Jack. I got gossip rags and publicists blowing up my phone trying to get at you. Truth’s gonna have to come out before they all just make something worse up and run with it.”

Jack didn’t look up. He knew Bobby was right.

“Did it have anything to do with that putz I saw stormin’ outta here just now? The British one? Ally’s manager.”

“Ex-manager,” Jack mumbled before he could stop himself. “I fired him just now.”

“She’s gonna be pissed when she finds out.”

“Probably, maybe. Don’t know. She’s been avoiding him. Went crazy when he showed up at the house today.”

He could hear the pieces trying to fit themselves together in Bobby’s mind.

“He the reason she’s in here tonight?”

“Yes and no.”

Bobby grunted, impatient. _Out with it, boy_

“She got hurt a couple days ago. I didn’t find out til today. I brought her here when she showed me.”

Jack squirmed, his ass starting to ache from his position down on the floor. With more than a few loud, old man groans, Bobby came down to sit by him. Jack refused to look over at him.

“Bobby…”

“Hmm.”

“Do you have Gary’s number, still?”

“His, and a few other Horowitzes. You’ve had some times, boy.”

“You think they know anything about getting out of contracts?”

“They’re lawyers, shithead.”

“Label contracts.”

“More than likely. Also would probably help if you had something to bargain with.”

Jack swallowed thickly and steadied himself. “Ally…” He paused and swallowed back another lump in his throat. It wasn’t just that this wasn’t his to tell. Saying it, even just in his head, was too much. He couldn’t…

“They hurt her,” he said. “She needs to get out from under them.”

A hand squeezed Jack shoulder and there were tears in his eyes and a weight—just one—shifted off his shoulder. He still didn’t know the way yet, but through all the fog he could almost make out the end of the road.

“I’ll make some calls,” Bobby said.

“Thank you.”

“Wouldn’t kill you to say those two words more often. Music to my fuckin’ ears.”

Jack laughed in spite of himself as he wiped at his eyes some more.

“You tell Ally’s father she’s here,” Bobby changed the subject suddenly.

“No,” Jack said dumbly.

Bobby swatted the back of his head. “Why the fuck not?”

“Didn’t seem right.” It still didn’t. Ally barely wanted to go to the hospital herself. This wasn’t something she’d have been ready for her dad to know. But the truth was probably out now. If Lorenzo wasn’t up now he’d know by tomorrow.

“So you’re just gonna let the man find out on Good Morning fucking America?” said Bobby. “Jesus wept, Jack, I know I taught you better manners. Don’t embarrass me.”

“I wanted to let her make the call.”

“You think she’s up to that?”

“She’s up to knowing what she does and doesn’t want him to know?”

“You’re okay with her leaving the man in the dark?”

“She’s a grown woman, and that’s her father. She’ll talk to him when she’s ready.”

“And if he shows up here before she is?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

“Hard to do that from two different parts of the hospital.”

Bobby didn’t wear smug well.

“I’m not hiding from her.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

“Cops dragged me in here to talk. Then that asshole showed up. Then you.”

“I’m leaving now,” Bobby said, standing up, bones cracking as he stretched them out. “I’ll call you.”

Jack grabbed his wrist as he walked by and finally dared to face him. “Thank you.”

Bobby said nothing, only pulled his hand away and rested it on top of Jack’s head, and Jack remembered when that hand covered his whole head and something in his heart whispered _I’ll take care of everything_ , and made his eyes sting.

“It ain’t on you, Jack. None of it.”

The door opened, Bobby stepped through it and slid it shut behind him, and it was who knew however long later before Jack could get off the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

Like the coward he was, Jack entered Ally’s room hoping she’d be asleep. Of course, life being what it was not only was she wide awake, she was staring right at the door when he walked in. Dread had never been a feeling Jack had ever felt at the prospect of seeing his wife, nor did he now, but it was dangerously close. He hoped to God it didn’t show.

“Hey,” he said from the doorway. Softly, like she was only just getting up. A smile spread across her face at that, as though he’d passed some kind of test by being the first to speak. It drew him all the way into the room and to her bedside where there was already a chair waiting for him.

He pulled the chair up closer and let one of his hands rest on top of the sheets beside hers, palm up just in case. She took it.

“I, uh, kinda fired Rez for you,” Jack said, unwilling to languish in the awkward silence and figuring he might as well rip that particular BandAid off quick. “Sorry.”

“You _what?_ ” Ally sat up just slightly. Shocked, but not mad, as far as Jack could see.

“Sorry,” he said again for good measure.

“Why did you—He was here?!”

“Yeah, someone on Twitter…well, you know.”

Weirdly, Ally seemed more put out by that than the other thing. “Yeah…” she said distractedly before turning back to the subject at hand. “So he just showed up and you just kicked him out?”

“Doctor showed him in to the room the cops questioned me in.”

Ally pulled her hand away. “And you two talked.”

“Are you mad?”

“That you talked?”

“That I told him to fuck off and lose your number.”

Ally looked thoughtful. “No,” she said quietly. “I wish I’d done it, though.”

“Sorry,” Jack said again. “I got pissed and it just slipped out.”

“What did he say to you?”

He hated that quiet in her voice. Like she was scared of him all of the sudden. He knew women who were…Got like this sometimes about being around guys afterward. Maybe he should’ve waited to talk to the doctor before coming in.

“Nothing that mattered.” 

Ally didn’t seem satisfied by that but she didn’t press him. They both fell silent again and Jack began to get uncomfortable. This couldn’t be how things went from now on.

“Listen,” he started. “I…I don’t know what to do with this.”

Ally frowned. Jack could hear the tremor in her voice before she even spoke. “With what?”

“This,” he said. “All of it. I don’t know where to go from here. What we’re supposed to do now.”

On the day the Grammy noms were announced they’d had probably their worst fight in their whole relationship. Thing was, Jack couldn’t remember what had started it or what it had been about, only what he’d said to hurt her. Despite knowing all the baggage behind it, and what that word meant to her, and what it would mean for her to hear him say that about her to her face, he’d been drunk and pissed and looking for a fight, and so he’d stabbed her in the place she bore the heaviest scars. Later, he’d apologized, they’d made up, and they were so far past it that it didn’t even warrant digging up. Except the way what he’d said just now had made Ally draw back and reel herself in in a way similar to that other time Jack had torn open an old wound. Only this time he hadn’t known it was there or what exactly it was he’d said that had reopened them.

Ally’s face reddened and she looked away. Jack was reminded of how small she had looked when she told him the truth about what had been going on all this time.

“What?” he said, taking her hand again and leaning in closer to get her to look at him.

Her mouth opened and shut twice before she seemed able to get the words out. She still wouldn’t look his way. “I know this is a lot. If you can’t deal…”

“If I can’t what—” Jack was totally lost now. “What do I have to deal with anything? I’m talking about you and me, Ally. Us. And you, too. What you want us to do.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said. “I understand if this is too hard.”

“What the hell difference does that make?”

“Nothing,” Ally said shakily. “I just want you to be happy.”

Jack was starting to see now. He sat back in his seat. “If you need some time alone to process all this, fine, Ally but don’t make it about what I want.”

Surprised, she turned finally to look at him. Why the fuck did she look so shocked?

“I love you,” he said simply. “Whatever you want, whatever you need. I don’t know what that is because nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Not that it has to you, but well, it is now, so you know best. So just tell me what you need. That’s all I want.”

For a long moment, Ally still looked too caught off guard to speak. Then she said, “I don’t know.”

Jack nodded. “We’ll take it one day at a time, then.”

“Dr. P said I’m all clear to go home tomorrow.”

“That’s good.”

“They said my cervix is bruised. I told her I don’t want any meds, she said the pain and swelling should go away on its own after a week or two.”

“Also good.”

“We, um, can’t have sex for a while.”

Jack looked away. “Thought never even crossed my mind. I don’t expect you too, you know, want to.”

“Jack?”

Her saying his name snapped his head back up.

“You’re not pissed, right?”

Was she crazy? “‘Course I am! At everything. I almost took Rez’ head off an hour ago.”

“I meant at me.”

She’d said it so softly he hadn’t been sure he’d heard her right until he saw how the question had her all bent over, hands in her lap, like some schoolgirl coming clean after cheating on a test.

Oh.

“Did Rez put something like that in your head?” It had to have been him, right? Or maybe it was the other guy. The one who’d…

“He said a lot of things,” Ally said, sounding far away as though remembering.

“You know most of it’s horseshit, though, right?” Desperate, Jack inched closer. Sitting on the edge of the bed now so that they faced each other, he tipped her chin up to catch her hey. “Right?”

“Not all of it though,” she said, dead-eyed and far away.

“Ally…” Jack paused, suddenly unsure if what he was going to say was the right thing before pressing on anyway. “I don’t know what he said to you that night or after but you gotta know I’m not goin’ anywhere. Not ever.”

Her face crumpled and with a weak cry, she pitched forward. Jack caught her, holding her as tight as he could as she seemed to melt against him.

“I had a boyfriend years ago before I met you.”

“Yeah?” Jack said. He winced as he felt her pinch his this skin around his stomach. “Ow.”

“We were a band. We sucked.”

“He sucked. People only came to see you, I bet.”

“We sang his songs. He said mine didn’t make any sense.”

“He was a douche.”

“That’s what everyone said but I was in love.”

“Kill me if I ever make you feel like you have to make yourself small for me.” Jack held her tighter, and meant it.

“I used to sing my own songs in the subway station, though. In and around Penn Station because he never went downtown if he could help it.

“Prick.”

“Yeah. One day, though, this guy in a suit comes up to me as I’m playing. He waits through my whole set. And when I’m done, he gives me his card and says if I have a demo he wanted to hear it. The label he worked for was looking for new talent.”

“Oh, Ally…”

“I was young and dumb.”

“Just young.”

“Anyway, his card had his MySpace handle on it. So I look him up when I get home and I message him and he invites me out to dinner with him and some of his bosses from the label.”

Her voice cracked. Not wanting to shush her or cut her off, all Jack could do was hold on and keep listening.

“And I knew,” Ally said through the tears she was trying so hard to hold back. “I knew what they said about meeting up with strangers on the internet but he seemed legit in person and I just thought, do or die, right?”

She heaved a heavy, staggered breath that seemed to take all her strength with it. “So I go to the place he said we’d meet, and I don’t tell the guy I’m seeing where I’m going, even though we were living together. And I meet the guy in Atlantic City. It’s just him, no one else. I didn’t question it because record label guys are busy, right?

“We eat at this casino/hotel place that had a restaurant attached. Then after, he invites me back to his private room. And I just go. Even though I know, I know there’s nowhere inside a gambling room to listen to the demo I brought with me.

“So then,” Ally’s voice caught again. “He leads me inside and tells me to make myself comfortable. A-and then…”

“Shhhh,” Jack whispered, as she broke down once again. “Shh, you don’t have to—”

“He pinned me down and, and I just let him—”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. Because he said if I let him he’d—”

“It wasn’t what you wanted, though, Ally. It wasn’t—”

“Afterwards, I went home t-to my, my boyfriend. I’d been gone for a whole day and neither of us had phones so he’d been freaking out. And then he saw I was all messed up. I could barely walk, like now. My eye was swollen shut.

“I told him what hap-happened. And he held me and he told me it would be alright. Then in the morning I woke up, and he told me he needed me to leave. That he could barely stand to look at me anymore. That the th-thought of even touching me made him sick. He said he couldn’t believe I’d be so low to sell him out just to get my foot in the door.”

“Ally…” Jack was at a loss. What the fuck did he even say to that, except no wonder. No wonder she’d kept it all a secret from him. It hadn’t been about him at all. She’d been afraid he’d repeat the past.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised her. Even to him it didn’t feel like enough. “Neither time was your fault. I don’t care how it happened. They were wrong. I’m sorry the guy you were with before didn’t tell you this, and I’m sorry he hurt you so bad. I’ll say it as many times as you need. It’s not on you. You didn’t bring this on yourself.”

“You don’t hate me?”

“Never.”

“That night, Rez made it seem like if you saw what he’d done to me you’d think I was—like, ruined or something.”

“People are things to people like him. He doesn’t know any better. You’re not some prized vase for me to show off and give away when I get bored. You’re you, that’s the only person you belong to.”

“I know,” she said, to Jack’s relief. “I know all that’s true. I knew it when he said it. I just…inside, like in my head, I feel…ruined.”

“Okay.”

“ _Okay?_ ”

“Is that something I can fix?”

“Not really…Maybe.”

“Let me know if there is?”

“Okay.”

“Jack?”

“Hm?”

“It wasn’t Rez. The man who…Rez left me there and came and got me after. He knew. I didn’t when he brought me there. But it wasn’t him.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to tell you who?”

“I wanna know,” Jack said after a taking a minute to think about it. “But not if you don’t wanna tell me. It can wait.”

“Is it wrong that I don’t wanna go to the police?”

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t know or you don’t wanna tell me what you think.”

“Both.”

“I want you to tell me.”

“…I think you should do what feels right.”

“It’d be the right thing. But it’s too late for there there isn’t any evidence. Rez made me take a shower after and he took my clothes.”

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t speak out anyway.”

“I don’t want to go through all that if there’s no chance they can prove it and they’d just end up getting away with it.”

“You’re the only one that gets to decide. Whatever you do, I’ll be right there with you.”

“Thank you.”

“Love you.”

“Can Rez really be fired? How do I get another manager?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

“We’re already there.”

“In the morning, after breakfast.”

“Fine.”

“I love you.”

“You, too.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't wait to see what y'all think! 
> 
> Epilogue up next!!


	8. Chapter 8

The kids are bowled over by the snow. With only two more days to go until Christmas their energy levels were already pretty much piqued, hearing that the weather man had predicted between thirty-six to forty-eight inches overnight had sent them into overdrive. And that was how Ally found herself being dragged—literally dragged—out of bed at seven that morning to take the kids out to Flower Hill like she’d promised the night before.

Memphis did actually get an occasional two inches every now and then, according to Noodles, but almost never around Christmastime, nor did it ever stick to the ground long enough to do anything with it. SpendingChristmas in New York was an exciting enough prospect but when he and Paulette had told the kids it was probably going to snow that had been all they could talk about from then on. It was sweet. Frankie and Leo were like kids out of another time—or maybe this was just how kids were, in general, Ally didn’t know—they got so excited over the littlest things. It was fucking refreshing when you spent most of your time enmeshed in the Hollywood rat race.

She and Jack gave Noodles and Paulette the morning off and took the kids to the park after a quick breakfast. It was crowded, but not so bad that they couldn’t claim a spot for themselves on the main hill. There was a lot they tell you about being married but one thing Ally was finding one hundred percent verifiable is that you never stop learning new things about your partner. Today, for instance, was the day she learned that her Arizona boy is a fucking fiend for the snow. Watching him, Ally was sure he has more fun than the kids did. She had to drag all three of them back home once it got to be around lunchtime. By then, she was so exhausted she wound up skipping dinner and crashing until after dinner.

It felt weird to have the house so full, in a good way, though. It was a reminder to Ally—and probably to Jack, too, if she asked him—that it really wasn’t just the two of them against the world even though it felt like that a lot of the time with their tendency to insulate themselves. But their village really wasn’t so small after all.

It was dark when she finally woke and the house was mostly quiet. Ally wound up where she usually did when her sleep schedule got fucked up like this, the piano. Not playing, she didn’t want to disturb the rest of the house, but there was a new song she was working on finishing up that her manager really liked and she heard it best when she was at least sitting at the piano.

“Slave driver got you burnin’ the midnight oil.”

Ally smirked when she saw him leaned against the doorway of the room. She hadn’t noticed whether he was in bed next to her or not but Charlie’s leash in his hand probably answered that question.

“I just want to have it ready for Bobby when he comes over for dinner tomorrow.”

Jack laughed softly as he came further into the room and sat down on the bench nest to her. “You’re makin’ me look bad, you know, bein’ all productive and whatnot. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Yeah, well, can’t help it that you’re a slacker.” She elbowed him, playfully, as he wrapped an arm around her.

Bobby had showed up at their house the day Ally had gotten released from the hospital like a damn superhero. All morning long she and Jack had both been stewing in their own little private worlds about how they’d gotten off so easily with their being no paparazzi dogging them as they’d left the hospital or camped out in front of the house when they’d pulled up. When Ally finally picked up her phone it was to a voicemail from her dad asking why the hell he’d had to find out from the damn morning news that she’d been laid up in the hospital with an asthma attack. To which she’d played along and told him that both she and Jack had forgotten their phones at home in all the rush. It was all a damn mystery that neither she nor Jack had the energy to try and unravel; one, due to being drained from all the events of the day before, and two out of fear of jinxing their good luck. They hadn’t wanted to touch it. Not the media, not the stuff with the label, not even any of the things Ally had confessed to him mere hours ago, about her past and all the things Rez and Paul had done and said. The two of them probably would have spent the whole day curled up on the couch eating Cap’n Crunch were it not for Bobby busting in on them.

“This is what we’re doin’ then?” he’d said, hands on his hips, in full Unimpressed Dad mode.

“How the fuck do you still have a key?” Jack had demanded. He, just like Ally, had been ready to jump out of his skin at the sound of the door unlocking.

“Better question is why the fuck do _you_ still have a hide-a-key, dummy! Now beat it, I’m not here to see you.”

After a few mild protests and a bit of back and forth, Jack finally did go into the other room with implicit understanding between Ally and Bobby that he’d still be listening in. Never one to mince words or beat around the bush, Bobby got right to it once the two of them had at least, the illusion of privacy between them.

“Don’t know if Jack told you,” he began. “But I was at the hospital last night.”

“He told me.”

Bobby had nodded thoughtfully. “We had words. He didn’t tell me everything but I can guess. It’s up to you if you want me in on the whole story, but the point is I hear you’re in the market for a new manager.”

It was obvious what he was getting at but Ally hadn’t known how to take it at first.

“You were doin’ some different stuff with that other guy than what you and Jack had going on when you were touring together. Not my taste, personally, but if that’s the direction you wanna go in this old dogs up to learnin’ new tricks.”

“Will the label allow that, though?” That hadn’t been the first question on Ally’s mind but it seemed the most pressing.

“About that,” Bobby said. “Did Jack ever mention to you that I used to golf with the president?”

Had she been drinking, Ally would’ve done a spit-take. “Of the label?” She had to clarify.

Bobby nodded. “Me and Mike haven’t been on the green in a while but he and I had a chat last night. There’s a new, up and coming label that’s set up shop out in Forrest Hills. Seems a little new-agey to me but they’ve been going strong for about two and a half years now. They’re signing a lot of indies, you’d be their first major artist which’d be a good deal for you. When I told Mike about the trouble you’d been havin’ with your manager and with some of his people he was a little skeptical, I won’t lie, but when I mentioned you still had the texts that cock-eyed rat-fucker had sent you; well, Mike’s a real low-key guy. He doesn’t like a lot of press and he hates paying lawyers. He offered to sell your contract to the new label if you’re in the mood to make a change.”

It had all seemed too good to be true at the time. Probably because she’d gotten so used to Rez making everything he did for her seem like some great, Herculean effort on his part, like he was some almighty janitor always cleaning up her messes. The Boyfriend had been like that to; if only she’d put two and two together sooner. Hindsight was a fucking bitch.

“What’re you thinkin’ about?” she heard Jack rumble in her ear. He kissed her forehead and waited.

Their therapist said both in their couple’s sessions and in Ally’s individual sessions that it was important to be honest with Jack when she fell into moods like this, which was often. Most of the time Ally was pretty good about it. But it had been such a nice day, and it was Christmastime, and she was so fucking tired of always bringing this up again and again, all the time.

“Just…how I wish I could be smarter about things sometimes before they blew up in my face.”

Tucked into his side she couldn’t see his face but she could certainly hear the frown. “Ally…”

“I know. Really, I know.” True to his word, he’d been telling her every time this came up that it wasn’t her fault, that she shouldn’t keep blaming herself. She wasn’t just bullshitting him when she said she knew, she did. It was just feeling it sometimes was the hard part.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“Okay.” He was always good about that.

“I’m glad we did this,” Ally changed the subject. “Christmas. I’m glad we didn’t let what happened stop us.”

Jack hummed in agreement. “It’s nice having a full house.”

“I was thinking the same thing. You had a lot of fun with the kids today.”

“Gonna be sore as hell tomorrow, though.” _Worth it_ , he didn’t say.

They grinned at each other, leaning in until their noses touched and then, finally, their lips.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap, gang!! Thank you, everyone for sticking with this story, for reading and for commenting. For now, I can say I'm finished with this little corner of Ally and Jack's world. But you never know if another plot bunny might pop into my head. Until then, friends, you can find me on Twitter @BriMorgue 
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> XX


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